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SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
AND SOCIAL NEEDS

THE LIBRARY OF SCIENCE
AND CULTURE

Edited by Prof. H. Levy

The outstanding feature of the present age is the
extent to which the life of Man is affected by the
remarkable growth of science. Not only has the
development of scientific processes had a profound
and disturbing effect on social conditions, but the
extension of scientific knowledge and the increasing
application of the scientific method m all directions
have transformed our mental outlook and evoked new
conceptions in history, ethics, philosophy, religion,
and every phase of culture

The Liurarj of Science and Culture is designed to
present to the general reader a picture of the world,
both of action and of thought, as science is shaping
it. It will reveal how mankind has sought in science
the means of satisfying its varied needs; and how, in
turn, science is stimulating fresh aspirations, inspiring
loftier deeds of progress, and awakening hopes of
increasing mastery over the destiny of the race

Each volume will deal with one aspect of modern
thought, or with a group of aspects. Together they will
provide a comprehensive survey of the ever-widening
empire of science, providing up-to-date information
on the most recent developments and indicating the
lines upon which further achievement is expected.

After Chick and Dalyell.

What vitamins can do. Twins in a Vienna infants’
home in 1921. The little girl at the left, six months’ before
the photograph was taken, had both rickets and scurvy.
She was badly under weight, could neither stand, sit, nor
talk, and at twenty- two months had only four teeth.
After six months’ treatment with a diet rich in vitamins,
she was healthy, active, and cheerful, with twelve teeth.
Her twin brother on the right had suffered in the same way,
but had been in another ward where no special dietetic
treatment was given. He remained unable to sit without
support, had no energy, and gave no signs of intelligence.
(See p. 100.)

By courtesy of “ British Medical Journal .”

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By courtesy of the British United Shoe Machinery Co. Ltd.

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

AND

SOCIAL NEEDS

JULIAN HUXLEY

With an Introductory Chapter by
Sir William Bragg, F.R.S., and
Discussions with Professor H.
Levy, Sir Thomas D. Barlow,
K.B.E., and Professor P. M, S.
Blackett, F.R.S,

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON :

WATTS & CO M

S & 6 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C4

First published 1934

Printed and Published m Great Britain by C A. Watts and Co, Limited,
5 & 6 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E C 4

FOREWORD

SCIENCE AND SOCIAL NEEDS

I F Society has often been blind to the possibilities
of Science, in its turn Science has been a blind force
m social life. Lauded on one side for the profusion
with which it has showered its gifts on mankind, it
is regarded on the other with rising suspicion as a
possible cause of social dislocation. Electric power,
lighting, heating, traction, sound films, wireless —
these and numerous other social amenities have been
rendered possible by a single discovery in physical
science, and they in their turn have produced far-
reaching repercussions in the life of the community.
They have compelled readjustments in modes of life, in
habits of thought, and in the cultivation of tastes.
They have consistently undermined religious dogma.
They have radically altered the incidence of employ-
ment and of production in all but the most agricultural
of communities. They have altered the distribution
of populations and stimulated the industrialization of
vast areas of the earth hitherto untouched by mechan-
ization and commerce.

Here on a wide scale is a field of Applied Science
in the true sense of the term. To accord blame or
credit to the selected few scientists who contributed

FOREWORD

most to setting this social avalanche in motion would
be futile. However conscious they were of the scientific
implications of their work, they could not pi edict its
social effects. If, however, sucli tremendous experi-
ments m applied science are to be tried on mankind,
it is of first importance to examine in what circumstances
these forceful activities are aroused, the nature of
science itself, and its cultural and social significance.

As a first, almost a pioneer, step towards accumulating
modern data on these matters, this series of investiga-
tions and discussions conducted by Professor Julian
Huxley stands out as something unique. He has
visited research laboratories and university departments
of all kinds, from those concerned with the purest
of science to those involved in direct production;
and the innumerable channels through which the fund
of knowledge pours out into its multitude of social
applications have been made apparent.

It will not be contended that the data are complete,
or the analysis and conclusions in any sense final.
What can be asserted without question, however, is
that here at any rate is one of the first surveys of science
in relation to many aspects of social needs. If we
are to become conscious of our own capacities as a
community, we must understand these many-sided
implications. This does not mean that a knowledge
of our capacities will make it possible to plan the
running of a community on scientific lines. Nations
are not isolated so completely from one another that

FOREWORD

vii

each can be dealt with on its own. Because they
interlock, piecemeal planning is likely to accentuate
rather than alleviate our difficulties. It is essential
in spite of this, and because of this, that we should
understand the interactive nature of Science and
Society.

This is the first volume of The Library of Science and
Culture, which it is hoped may assist to that end.

H. Levy.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

R EADING through the proofs of this little book,
which attempts to give some connected picture
of my “ tour of British Science/' I realized afresh how
small a fraction of the whole I had really been able to
see, still less to write about — and yet at the same time
was surprised how much ground, both physical and
intellectual, I had really managed to cover in those
crowded weeks. Clive was surprised at his own
moderation : I became surprised at my own activities !

During that time I came to realize the vast amount
of scientific knowledge and practical wisdom diffused
through this country, of which up till then I had been
at best dimly aware ; and to feel my own ignorance and
limitations very acutely. - ' I became more than ever
impressed with the fact that both our existing structure
of civilization and our hope of progress are based on
science, and that the lack of appreciation and under-
standing of science among business men, financiers,
educational authorities, politicians, and administrators
was a serious feature in our present situation.

Almost equally serious, however, is the absence of
a broad scientific outlook on life, too often to be noted
in the scientific specialist as well as indhe layman.
For if I may repeat here what will be found stressed

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

in several places in the pages that follow, the most
important of all the lessons I learned from my tour
was that science occupies an anomalous half-and-half
position in our affairs to-day. On the physico-chemical
side it is very highly developed, both in its pure and
applied aspects; the biological sciences are rapidly
growing, though there is still a lag m their applications ;
but the psychological and social sciences receive hardly
any public support and find hardly any practical
application. The next step must be to apply science
all round — to the organization of society and to various
separate social problems such as education, religion,
the penal system, statistics, health, and so on. And
we do not only need scientific research in the narrow
specialist sense : v we need also the scientific spirit
and method, m the shape of careful planning. Planning
is much in the air at the moment : we must make sure
it is scientific planning, with an experimental basis
wherever possible, and always in touch with scientific-
ally ascertained fact.

The same applies to the scientific movement as a
whole. For science too is a social activity, and itself
demands scientific study. There is here a lesson for
scientists to learn, as well as one for statesmen and the
lay public.

I must not forget all those who helped me with
information, advice, and hospitality. Space forbids
individual acknowledgments : so I must include all,
whether from Government Departments, Universities,

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Research Stations, or industrial laboratories, in this
brief but sincere expression of my thanks. Nor must
I forget the B.B.C., who originally suggested that I
should undertake this survey of British science.
For that suggestion, and for the facilities and stimulus
provided by their Talks Department, I should like
to make this public expression of gratitude. The
basis of this present book is furnished by the twelve
wireless talks and discussions I gave for the B.B.C.
But these have been very considerably revised and
amplified to adapt them for publication in book form,
so that this volume contains more than half as much
again as the talks.

Finally, I should like to acknowledge the valuable
help I have had from my secretary, Miss P. Coombs, in
seeing the book through the press.

Julian Huxley.

King's College ,
London .

March , 1934

CONTENTS

CH \P. PAGE

I. SCIENCE. FRIEND OR ENEMY? ... I

II. RAISING THE ISSUES ... . 14

III. SCIENCE AND FOOD ..... 34

IV. SCIENCE AND BUILDING ... 50

V. SCIENCE AND CLOTHING ... 67

VI. SCIENCE AND HEALTH . .84

VII. SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS . . . 105

VIII. RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY .... 126

IX. SCIENCE AND WAR 150

X. MAN AND SOCIETY .... 176

XI. PURE SCIENCE 203

XII. SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS . . 225

XIII. SUMMING UP 25 I

INDEX 28l

xiii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

FACING PAGE

Science and Health . What Vitamins Can Do

Frontispiece

An Automatic Edge-Setting Machine . ,,

Apparatus Used by Three Great British Men of
Science ........ 8

Fireman Holding Safety Lamp . . 9

Pure Science A Million-Volt Spark ... 16

Applied Science A Power Station of the Grid . . 17

The National Physical Laboratory, Teddington . 26

A Gas Mask for Peace-Time Uses .... 27

Plant Breeding * A Nursery for Wheat-Grass . . 44

Turning Mountain Moorland into Meadow . . 45

The Heliodon : An Instrument for Sun-Planning . 56

The Bricks’ Cemetery ...... 57

A Contrast in Housing : Human Homes in the Slums 64
A Contrast in Housing * A Home for Apes m the Zoo 65
A New Type of Wool-Spmning Machine ... 72

Science and Shoe-Making : An Instrument for Measur-
ing Feet 73

Special Lamps for Textile Research 73

A Sea-Plane Landing in Mid-Ocean . . . 106

Progress m Transport : An Autogiro . . . 107

A Planned Road m an Unplanned Countryside . 112

Full-Scale Models of Parts of the Piccadilly Tube
Station ........ 113

Testing the Strength of a Concrete Floor-Beam . 128

Testing “ Creep ” in Steel ..... 129

Amphibious Tank .... . 162

XVI

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

r\CI2STG PAGE

Horizontal Wind-Tunnel for Aviation Research
A Vertical Wind-Tunnel for Research on Spin .

A Special Hard Hat for Use m Mines
Experimental Gallery of Old Boiler Shells
The Same Gallery after an Experimental Explosion
Industrial Psychology A Test for Weavers
A Test for Divided Attention ....
X-Ray Photographs of a Rubber Band and Human

Hair

The Structure of the Wool Molecule as Revealed by
X-Rays

Dr. Walton with his High-Tension Atom-Splitting
Apparatus .......

Galileo's Telescope Contrasted with a Modern Tele-
scope ........

How the Microscope Helps in the Steel Industry
Biological Control of Prickly Pear in Australia
Science and Cold Storage . . ...

A Corner of the Insect Department at the Natural
History Museum ......

Science and Noise A Noise-Measuring Apparatus .
" Noiseless ” Electric Motor .....

163

176

1 77

180

181

188

189

204

205

216

217

226

227

234

235

256

257

IN THE TEXT

Science m the Laundry Industry ....

The Thigh-Bones of a 5 |-day Embryo Chick .

The Total Vocabulary of Basic English .

Map Showing Density of Population of the Common
Heron ........

Map Showing Density of Population of the Crested
Grebe .......

Maps Showing Breeding-Places and Migrations of
an African Species of Locust . . . 232, 233

Graph of the Probable Future Population of Great
Britain ....... 274

122

220

221

CHAPTER I

SCIENCE : FRIEND OR ENEMY ?

By Sir William Bragg

M R. JULIAN HUXLEY has undertaken a very
remarkable tour in this country. He is studying,
broadly speaking, the influence which scientific discovery
is exerting upon our lives. He has examined the methods
by which research is carried on m various places and
for various purposes. He will tell us of the results.
And especially he will consider the relations of science
to social questions : questions that we are all asking
to-day. Is scientific research drawing us together or
forcing us apart ? Is it to be commended for
our needs or blamed for causing unemployment ?
Does it help to bnng peace between the nations, or
war? Does it add to mankind’s vision or restrict it?
If it is solving some problems, is it perhaps raising
others still more difficult and troublesome?

How tremendous these questions are we have only
recently begun to realize. There is division among us
as to how they should be answered. For some reasons
it seems that we should make every use possible of
the new knowledge which is poured upon us; and
apparently there are other reasons for refraining./' It
seems foolish to throw away new methods which give
us better results for less labour or a new understanding
which makes the world a richer place for us. , On the
other hand, men have used new knowledge for the

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY ?

purpose of constructing machines; and the machine,
though extremely useful, has often produced unemploy-
ment, which is an evil, however temporary it may be.
Is there a real solution, or can we do no more than
compromise? At the 1933 meeting of the British
Association in Leicester, Sir Frederick Gowland Hop-
kins considered the matter very seriously, and so did Sir
Josiah Stamp in an evening address. The year before,
at York, Sir Alfred Ewing was not a little pessimistic
on the subject. The tone at Leicester was rather
more cheerful. But we do not want such questions
to be considered by a few talented men only. These
are matters for us all, because they involve our social
relations, our well-being, and our content. We are
glad of the facts that Mr. Huxley will be able to lay
before us.

I have been trying to think how I might help to
prepare the way for Mr. Huxley and contribute to a
better appreciation of what he is going to tell us. I
am going to ask you to make an imaginary journey
with me round the little corridor beneath the seats of
the theatre of the Royal Institution. On a small scale
it is rather like the underground spaces of Piccadilly
Circus, and it is lined with well-lit show-cases like those
of a big store. In these cases are shown the pieces of
apparatus which have been used by great experimenters
of the last hundred years, particularly by those who
have worked in the Institution. Everything that is
shown suggests to us some aspect of the big questions
we have before us.

We halt before the first case : it goes back to the
beginning of last century. There is an old model of a
fireplace in it, another of a boiler, a cooking-pot, and

SCIENCE : FRIEND OR ENEMY ?

some instruments for measuring heat. They are all
that is left of the work of a certain Count Rumford, an
American of extraordinary talents who sided with the
British during the War of Independence. He lived
afterwards m England and then in Munich, where he
won great honour and was made a Count of the Holy
Roman Empire. To scientific men, especially to
engineers, he is known for his fundamental work on
heat. But as I look, with you, at the relics of his
experiments, I do not want to tell you of his researches
so much as of the ideas that fired his imagination.
For he was one of the first of those who tried to use
scientific knowledge in a scientific way m the interest
of economy, and especially for the relief of the dis-
comforts of the poor. I use the word “ poor ” m the
sense that was common m those days.

He wanted to gather together m one place models
which would show how all sorts of common things
should be made and used His wntmgs describe,
with extraordinary foresight, the modern type of
Science Museum, such as the one in South Ken-
sington, which has recently become so popular. He
was particularly interested m the economy of fuel,
and waged war on the ill-designed grates and chim-
neys which filled rooms and streets with smoke.
It was that which brought him in contact with Sir
Thomas Bernard, another man of great interest from
our point of view. For he was the active member of a
remarkable body of men’ who met and worked under
the grandiloquent title of a “ Society for Improving
the Condition and adding to the Comforts of the Poor.”
The very title is illuminating. It was unique in its
day : the one Society in London apart from religious

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY ?

bodies which set out to relieve distress by the systematic
cnv'loviTi.'-nt of scientific knowledge. There was cer-
tainly plenty to do There were very few hospitals,
and some of those existing had terrible records
Bernard gives an account of the conditions m a little
book, Pleasure and Pain , which he wrote m 1818,
though, curiously enough, it was not published until
1930. His Society founded new hospitals and charitable
institutions of many kinds and strove to correct
existing abuses. As might be expected, he met with
many difficulties, which he describes with some humour.
Bernard was treasurer of the Foundling Hospital at the
time, and with Rumford’s help he set the kitchens and
heating arrangements in order. But when the same
economies were introduced into Christ’s Hospital they
broke down, because the cook had the perquisite of the
dripping and her husband the perquisite of the cinders.

You see, then, that this window m the corridor takes
us back to early days of organized endeavour to apply
scientific knowledge to the relief of distress. And our
minds run on to survey all the work in the cause of
health that has been done since then : the innumerable
hospitals where every scientific advance has been
examined for its possible usefulness, the Boards of
Health, and all other bodies which have laboured to
prevent disease. No one of us is likely at this point
to say that it would have been better if in this direction
there had been no search for knowledge and no wish
to apply it.

Let us move to the next window. Rows of lanterns
of a curious appearance stand on its shelves. They
were made by Sir Humphry Davy. He had been asked
to solve the problem of the lighting of ‘ ‘ fiery mines. ’ ’ In

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY?

the search for coal it had become necessary to penetrate
into regions where explosive gases were to be found;
and many terrible accidents had occurred Davy's
miner's lamp was the result of a few weeks of experi-
ment, and provided the solution that had been asked
for Beside the lamps stands the photograph of a
grateful letter from miners of Northern England :
unable to read or write, they have put crosses to their
names. Others, like Stephenson, were at the same
time groping their way to the same sort of solution.

There also stands one of the machines which the
small boys turned continually, causing a steel wheel to
strike showers of sparks from a flint which they pressed
against it. The sparks were not hot enough to fire
the gases, but their feeble light enabled the miners to
get on with their work. With the aid of Davy's
device, mining was, and still is, carried on in com-
parative safety where otherwise nothing could be done
It stands for all those labours which in the past century
have aimed at the safety of the mine ; and is itself one
of the most effective of all those devices. That is
good, let us say. But with every improvement in
method comes an increase in the extent of the work
and in the numbers of the men who live by it Millions
of people in South W ales, in the northern counties, and
elsewhere, have been put in the way of earning their
living In these times a slump has come : the whole
effort is thrown out of gear, and we see the pitiful
spectacle of widespread unemployment m the mining
areas. What are we to say? Would it have been
better if the miner's lamp had never been invented and
the progress of coal-mining had been stayed? Would
it be well to take the warning and to stop all such

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY?

attempts to improve the conditions of working, on the
ground that a rapid rise in employment may result m
a fall to be dreaded ?

Here is a window m which there are many things of
great interest A small tube contains a little trans-
parent liquid, which, we learn from the card that lies
beside it, is some of the first benzene ever made A
hundred years ago gas for lighting purposes was carried
round in cylinders. Curious residues were found m the
cylinders after use; and Faraday (in 1825) extracted
the new liquid and determined its composition. What
visions the sight of it conjures up l Benzene is the
central figure of organic chemistry. On that chemistry
depends m the first place all our knowledge of the
materials of living bodies : all our attempts to under-
stand and fight disease Industrially, the dye industry
hangs on benzene and the substances derived from it.
I may remind you that since the War the dye industry
in this country has advanced greatly, and employs its
hundreds of thousands directly, and indirectly ten
times as many. And at the same time we may link
to organic chemistry all other chemistries, tremendously
powerful in these days. Do we wish that chemistry
had never functioned ? Would we give up anesthetics,
for example ? Some of us are old enough to remember
the days of our childhood when we parted with our teeth
with nothing to help us through; and we wondered
how they stood it who had to bear the pain of long
and serious operations in the hospital. But, then, the
same chemistry has given us the poison gases of war-
fare. “ Sorry, sir,” said the auctioneer to the would-be
purchaser, “ but if you want the parlour lamp you’ve
got to take the garden roller. They’re in the same lot.”

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY? 7

Here, besides the benzene, are some cups and moulds
of wood and wax. They recall to me the whole manu-
facture and use of the submarine cable I can picture
the multitudes engaged in the collection of the insulating
materials m the forests and the mines, the preparation
of the copper and the steel, the winding and the laying
of the cable, and the use we all make of it. The
moulds at which we are looking were used by Faraday
in his electrical experiments , and it was on his results
that William Thomson was able to advise the pro-
moters of the Atlantic cable as to its proper design.
Not that Faraday was thinking of cables or telegraphy
when he made the experiments . he was concerned
only with the basic laws of electricity.

This reminds us of the differences, such as they are,
between pure and applied science. Just as we grow
m our gardens annuals for our immediate pleasure, and
plant shrubs m the herbaceous border to reward us m
a few years' time , while, with longer foresight, we plant
forests or give the natural timber the opportunity to
grow, so it is with the growth of knowledge Often we
ask for some immediate solution of a problem; and
that is particularly true in the industry of the small
manufacturer. The bigger man can look further ahead.
And when it comes to the advances of science into the
unknown, long vision is wanted, for no one knows if
any use can be made of what is found. Only govern-
ments, universities, or large-scale private industry can
be expected to give attention to it Faraday works out
the laws of electricity : that is in the background of
the picture. The designer looks for the best form to
give to the cable and the best materials of which to
make it. That is the middle distance. For instance,

8 SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY?

the research workers of the Non-Ferrous Metals
Research Association have recently discovered ah
alloy which replaces the lead covering, with the most
remarkable results m the way of economy. The pure
lead covering wore and broke as its loop swung to and
fro in the tidal currents, but the new covering is more
elastic, and m other ways is as good as the old. Lastly,
there are the innumerable technical difficulties that
occur in manufacture and laying. These are in the
foreground.

Let us turn now and look into a window on the other
side of the corridor. There is a glass case containing
a number of glass tubes. They are the remains of
what Faraday used when he condensed certain gases
into liquids under the influence of cold and pressure.
On this work, extended by others, rests the modern
industry of refrigeration. We have learnt how to use
cold in order to keep our food supplies from going bad.
We have learnt how to bring food cheaply and safely
from abroad, being unable to produce it in sufficient
quantities at home. If it were cut off, the necessary
readjustments would be terribly painful. Undoubtedly,
however, this foreign supply keeps down home prices
and makes it difficult for our own growers to earn a
living. How far ought we to go with our efforts in
this direction? It was stated recently that the avoid-
ance in the waste of fruit during its voyage from South
Africa to England amounted to one whole shipload in
the year ; which improvement was due to research into
the right conditions of cold storage. Is this a good
result or a bad one ? And this reminds us of many
such perplexities. Taking the world as a whole, it
seems impossible to use all that is produced. When

Research in pure science may have practical results of the greatest
importance. Photographs of the actual apparatus used at the Royal
Institution by three great British men of science. Above, apparatus
used by Sir Humphry Davy : on the right, the earliest model for
safety lamps in mines. Centre, apparatus used by Faraday, which
laid the foundation of the whole electrical industry. Below,
apparatus used by Sir James Dewar, including the prototype of the
modern thermos bottle. {See pp. 2-1 1).

By courtesy of the Royal Institution,

The fruits of science. A fireman holding a safety lamp, of the tvpe
invented by Sir Humphry Davy, to a coal face to test for explosive gas

exJlod a e S 'JL pp P 5. i/cif S “ * characteristic but cannot

From Gas and Flame, issued by the Safety in Mines Research Board.
By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY?

the “ Marquis ” wheat was invented in Canada, vast
regions were thrown open to profitable wheat-growing,
and great numbers of men pushed forward to take
advantage of the fact. Ought we to go on trying to
find new wheats now that farmers cannot find a market
for what they have? Will the improvements in the
refrigeration of meat on board ship and the consequent
increase in imports press still more hardly on our
farmers ? Can our growers find advantages to be taken
of their home position, which may turn the scale m
their favour? What a number of difficult problems
present themselves !

Next to these old pieces of tubing are others shaped
like the letter V ; little pieces of platinum at the end
of copper wires are inserted into both sides of the V.
They are tubes which Faraday used when he worked
out the laws of a process which most people know by
the name of electro-plating. It cannot be denied that
this is an extraordinarily useful business, and that it
employs great numbers of men. We should be very
sorry to be deprived of it. There are other things of
interest in this window, each with its story to tell, but
we must move on. So w r e come to the most dramatic
of all the objects in the show : the famous ring of iron
wound with copper wire which was the foundation
of all electrical engineering. So much was said about
it three years ago, when all the world was honour-
ing the centenary of Faraday's discovery, that little
need be said about it now. We will remind our-
selves only of the vastness of our modem uses of
electricity. It seems to me to be a very significant
fact that the electrical industry, born so lately of
our discoveries and inventions, should be so active,

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY?

should give so much employment, and be so much
employed. To my mind, it fits in with the idea
that we are all happier and better when we strike out
continually on new lines Every good workman loves
an occasional new tool, and goes to his work with fresh
interest.

But now we must move on quickly. Here is a
window showing, among other things, a row of little
flasks, sealed up to keep the liquids which they contain
from contact with the air. Sixty years ago John
Tyndall filled them with broths or extracts of various
kinds of meat and game He wished to show that
these would keep indefinitely if pure themselves, and
if the air m contact with them was pure also They
look quite fresh still, with the exception of one or two.
Tyndall insisted that m ordinary air there are minute
living particles, which we now know as bacteria.
Those who had argued for the spontaneous generation
of life had not been careful enough. They had allowed
air laden with bacteria to get into touch with their
broths. It is interesting to note that these investiga-
tions impressed Tyndall with the value of pure air.
He found that the air near Haslemere, at Hindhead,
was very pure, and built himself a house there; and
many followed his example.

And now in our mind's eyes a wide vista spreads
itself before us, opened up by this and other pioneering
investigations. We have learnt the tremendous im-
portance of this invisible life to our national health, to
our food, to agriculture : we recognize some bacteria as
friends, some as enemies. Deadly epidemics have been
• stayed or prevented by such knowledge. Shall we
wish we had been kept in ignorance ? Have we allowed

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY?

populations to grow too fast by removing the plagues
that thinned them ? And especially have we kept alive
many who would be better dead? We must try to
make up our minds on these points, and all that Mr.
Huxley has to tell us will be useful.

A few steps more and we must bring the little tour
to an end Of all the objects left to be considered we
must be content with two. Here is a little collection
of apparatus used by the late Lord Rayleigh m his
work on acoustics : metal discs of various forms,
whistles of so high a pitch that very few, even of the
youngest, ears can hear them. Rayleigh’s work with
that of others came into use during the War when
apparatus had to be devised which would listen under
water for the noises made by submarines, and on land
would help to detect the whereabouts of aeroplanes
and guns. Since then the importance of sound and
its laws thrusts itself upon us more and more, m the
long-neglected design of halls fit for speech and music,
in the construction of telephones and of loudspeakers.
The control of sound is a peculiarly interesting question
just now, because so many complain of the torment of
noise m town, and out of town, and of the want of
privacy m the new piles of flats.

And m the last window of this corridor is the history
of the vacuum flask which Dewar invented to keep his
liquid air from boiling away. The first rough attempts
are there, and in succession are the gradually improving
patterns leading up to the present familiar form I do
not think we should like to smash up all our vacuum
flasks, either those of us who make use of them m daily
life or those who find them invaluable in the laboratory
and the factory. But it might, on reflection, be pos-

12 SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY?

sible to find a reason why we should be better without
them.

This little tour will, I hope, have served to show you
scientific knowledge at its source, and have called to
mind the wide use that the world makes of it. We
have seen, too, how many puzzling questions arise
even from this broad point of view. But we shall have
to go further. A large part of that which is still left
to be considered is concerned with the application of
science to the construction of the machine We all
know well that the machine can be both a blessing and
a curse. It can pour out its products in a stream
sufficient for all, and yet it can rob many of the
opportunity to earn. /Is it possible to control the
application of science to the development of machinery ?
The growth of knowledge, like the rain, descends alike
upon the just and upon the unjust ; and it is as impos-
sible to stay the former as it is to hinder the latter. A
wise people conserves its water and directs it into useful
channels Individual citizens may not use it wastefully
or selfishly And certainly they may not use it to their
neighbour's injury, they may not, for example, turn
a destructive stream upon someone else's property.
But there is no analogous control over the use of
scientific results. Is any such control possible ?

,/Pure science, that which I have referred to as long-
distance science, is international At a scientific con-
ference nationality disappears. It is when the results
of science are incorporated into business and trade that
trouble begins. To parody an old saying, when patents
come in at the door peace flies out of the window. But
can we avoid this competition as long as we are a
trading and a manufacturing nation? And if we

SCIENCE: FRIEND OR ENEMY?

cannot, what are we doing as a nation to incorporate
our growing knowledge, to add to it and to use it?
Sometimes it is said with a certain defiance that <f What
was good for our fathers is good enough for us.” That
is very likely to be true, but it would not be good
enough for the fathers if they were still alive. The
energy and the wit which made them into what they
were would by now be making them into something else
Mr. Huxley visits the research laboratories of the
universities, of the trade associations formed m con-
nection with the Government, and of various firms,
and tells us what he sees. It is well to get at the facts ;
we shall then be better able to judge where we are.
We may not be all m agreement as to the need for the
pursuit of knowledge m the satisfaction of our curiosity,
in the exercise of our talents, in the enlargement of our
minds. There are certainly differences among us as
to how it should be used and controlled when we have
got it. We all approve the use of it for mutual help.
We probably deplore the use of it for mutual injury.
We surely disagree as to the extent to which we may
use it to fight each other economically. But we all
agree in our satisfaction that Mr. Huxley has under-
taken this mission.

CHAPTER II

RAISING THE ISSUES

In this chapter are treated some of the main questions that require
investigation, in the form of a discussion between the author and
Professor Levy

Levy. So, Huxley, I hear you are rushing round
the country making a survey of scientific activity.

Huxley. Yes, Levy, I have started trying to find
out something about the different ways and means by
which scientific research is being carried on here and
its results applied. So I have already been to Scotland
and Wales, and shall go on for some time visiting
various laboratories and research institutions. The
idea is to attempt to discover how far science to-day is
helping to cater for the needs of the people of this
country.

H . L. Do you mean you propose to show how
science is serving the needs of British industry ?

J. H. No, that is only a fraction of what I had in
mind. After all, science is helping Government
* Departments like the Post Office, and it is being used
to improve the nation's health. Besides that, I
want to see what is being done in regard to pure
science.

H. L. I see. Of course, all these — and more — come
within the ambit of science; but the question I was
suggesting was whether in the main — historically, if you

RAISING THE ISSUES

like — ‘the driving force of science is not its use for
production, and whether all these other aspects are not
really subsidiary to that

J. H. Well, I do not know that I have thought
much about the problem along those lines. Perhaps
we ought to clear the ground a bit and get down
to fundamentals.

H. L. All right : let us begin by examining what
this science is which you are going to study. I suggest
that the proper way to approach that question is
first, to examine what science has done in social life,
its relation to man's needs, and the methods it has
developed for handling the raw material of Nature.
Secondly, if we wish to understand why science has
taken on the complexion it has, we shall have to ask
ourselves some questions about the nature of the forces
that have directed scientific attention to certain fields,
to the exclusion of others. For example, why so
many scientists turn to the properties of dead matter
and so few to social problems; why, for instance, we
know so much about cold storage and so little about
how the community is run.

/. H. Well, of course, those are aspects of the
question. But I generally like to think of science as a
body of knowledge. The knowledge is organized, and
it is based on the scientific method. And the scientific
method consists of testing your results by observation
and experiment, and m publishing your facts and
your procedure in full, so that others can check your
conclusions.

This knowledge can, of course, generally be applied to
controlling nature, but most scientists, I think, would
say that there definitely is something that can be

RAISING THE ISSUES

called pure science, which has a momentum of its own
and goes on growing irrespective of its applications.

H. L. Well, Huxley, I think that to state things in
this way is to lay a false emphasis on pure science.
Can there be any essential division other than of degree
between it and applied science? Surely they are
interdependent, and differ only in their remoteness
from application.

J. H. Well, what about Greek science, for instance,
which had hardly any applications ?

H. L. I was talking primarily of the vast develop-
ments in science during the past few hundred years.
The Greek state was catered for by ample slave labour,
and therefore there was no need for mechanization,
for labour-saving devices. Thus the interests of the
Greeks — at least, those who were not slaves — were those
of a leisured class, and therefore their science was
mainly philosophical in complexion. Whatever appli-
cation there was, was mainly to war, and to the arts —
like architecture.

J. H. Yes, I see that. I suppose that is also why
Greek science differed so radically from modem science
in having little experimental foundation, and why the
ancient Greek scientists, unlike modem scientists with
their detailed technical publications, seem not to have
been interested in the methods by which they reached
their results, but only in their conclusions. As a
matter of history, I suppose it is fair to say that
modern science began in earnest less than three hundred
years ago with Francis Bacon, and his emphasis on
the need for objective testing.

H. L. All right. But surely this underlines my
earlier point, that science takes its complexion mainly

Basic science in the laboratory : a million-volt spark produced in
the electrical section of the National Physical Laboratory at
Teddington. (See p. 210.)

From The National Physical Laboratory (1933).

By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

RAISING THE ISSUES

from the social and economic life of the times There
was little experimenting among the Greeks, because
there was little need for application, whereas at the
time of Bacon social life had changed considerably,
transport and navigation to distant parts of the earth
had come in with commerce, crude slavery had all
but passed away. All these changes were stimulating
that deliberate and critical study of nature which we
call experimental science.

J. H. That is all very reasonable. But what about
pure science to-day ? There are surely plenty of prac-
tical problems for science to deal with now, and yet we
find scientists spending a great deal of time on very
abstract and remote questions, like the quantum theory,
the habits of deep-sea fish, the expanding universe,
or the internal constitution of stars, that we can
never hope to influence at all or to control in any
way.

H. L. Ah, that arises, it seems to me, from the
peculiar nature of modern conditions, where the
scientific movement, unable to find an outlet for its
accumulating energy — for its momentum, if you like,
— in industrial practice, turns rather to more specu-
lative fields. That, however, is another story. Any-
how, even these matters you mentioned are associated
with others which themselves have applications. For
instance, take the Quantum Theory. This has applica-
tions not very remote from the state of affairs inside
the ordinary wireless valve. Scientific work interlocks
from one end of the scale to the other.

J. H. Yes, I see your point. I can give you an
interesting illustration of that sort of thing in my own
field. Dr. Adrian of Cambridge has been making
c

i8 RAISING THE ISSUES

remarkable discoveries about the way in which our
nerves and brains work. But his researches were only
made possible by using certain kinds of amplifiers,
which m their turn would never have been developed
if it had not been for their very practical use in
wireless.

All the same, there are difficulties m your severely
practical view. Surely a great deal of scientific work
gets done just to satisfy the interest of the scientists
who carry it out ? And if so, is it not being carried
out for its own sake, as an end in itself ?

H. L Yes, to the individual scientist it appears
so; it gratifies an individual desire and provides a
personal satisfaction. So to him it appears an end in
itself. That is, of course, a practical but a purely
personal aspect The scientific work he does, however,
is taken up by someone else, and so he has played his
part in the movement we call science He has his
personal interpretation of the small part he has played ;
but we have to see science in wider perspective : as a
social affair fulfilling, however inadequately, certain
social needs, or providing some of the machinery for
their fulfilment.

/. H. That is still all right ; but what about the
keen amateur scientist — the amateur astronomer or
insect-collector or bird-watcher ? He surely is making
his observations an end in themselves ?

H. L. In that sense, yes That sort of work is
satisfying a personal need, certainly. But just because
it is so personal its scope is restricted.

J. H . It seems to me there are two things involved —
the impulse of curiosity, which man shares with other
animals such as the apes, and the direction in which

RAISING THE ISSUES

that impulse is used. You will not get good science of
the purer kind unless the curiosity impulse is strongly
developed.

H. L Yes, but the particular result depends on
the direction, and that is determined primarily by
social forces

J H. It depends on both, just as human achieve-
ment depends both on heredity and on environment.
But, in spite of the large amount of shaping which the
scientific impulse receives from social and economic
forces, it remains as a plain fact, does it not, that the
conclusions of science in a very real sense reach much
beyond the limits of the social system which gave them
birth. They are much more universal than any par-
ticular society or epoch, and lead to a structure of fact
and idea which is accepted by all who are capable of
dispassionately following the reasoning involved, irre-
spective of their race or nationality. Russian scientists
did not reject the discoveries of Morgan and hiscolleagues
on heredity because they came from “ bourgeois ”
America : they used them in their own research. Nor
does English or German science refuse to see the
validity of all the discoveries now being made by
" communist science ” in Soviet Russia. Science has a
pure aspect because it is in part the product of the
impulse to discover for the sake of discovery. It
also has a universal or general aspect because its very
method makes it capable of being tested by anyone
competent, and so its results are accepted by competent
people irrespective of race, nationality, religion, or
class. It also has a practical aspect because it is in
part the product of the impulse to control nature for
human ends, and a local social aspect because its

RAISING THE ISSUES

growth is stimulated and guided by the social and
economic forces of the time.

H. L. It does not seem to me that science becomes
“ pure ” because there are individual scientific workers
whose personal motive in carrying through investiga-
tions is that they desire simply to extend the boundaries
of knowledge. The existence of such a motive does not
necessarily enable them to lift themselves outside their
historic social epoch, but it may mean that they will
concentrate their attention on problems more remote
from direct application. Of course, the conclusions of
science must reach beyond the limits of the social
system that gave them birth, for the simple reason that
science concerns itself with a study of the material
physical world, and that physical world exists objec-
tively and irrespective of particular social systems.
Science, however, does not cease at discovery. It is
also concerned with application, and the applications
are to the systems of society in being — British, German,
Russian, or American. Moreover, since scientists,
like other workers, have to earn their living, it seems
to me that to a large extent the demands of those who
provide the money will, very broadly, determine the
“ spread ” of scientific interest in the field of applied
science. It is from there that the driving force is
exerted on the scientific movement. I know of no
scientist who is so free that he can study absolutely
anything he likes, or who is not restricted in some way
by limitations such as the cost of equipment. With
most of what you have said, however, I agree, but I
think it has to be seen in this setting.

J. H . Well, I think we might see how far we agree
now, after all this argument. How will this do as a

RAISING THE ISSUES

formal definition? Science in the modern sense is a
body of knowledge which has been tested by experiment.
Historically it has grown as a result of several factors,
which affect man both as an individual and as a social
animal. These factors are . first, our need to exercise
some control over the forces of nature; secondly,
our impulses of manipulation, curiosity, and our urge to
understand man's place in the universe, and thirdly,
the pleasure we get out of the use of our faculties m
the process of observing, understanding, and changing
nature. Would you agree to that?

H. L. Yes, I think that will do, although you are
still thinking of science primarily as a body of know-
ledge. But now, agreeing that science and the scientific
movement have emerged out of the growing needs of
society, we ought to study it as a movement, to examine
what stress has been placed on the various aspects of
it — for example, the purer as opposed to the more
definitely applied. What, for example, settles how
much money shall be devoted to scientific work in the
Universities in comparison with severely technological
work outside of them ? Is there any deliberate study
and control of the scientific movement as a whole, or
does it just develop chaotically?

J. H . Of course, that is a very difficult question — so
many factors are involved. For one thing, so much of
the work done at the Universities, I quite agree, inter-
locks with practical applications that one can hardly
draw a sharp line between the two fields.

H. L . Would you, then, agree that the Universities
and other purely academic institutions are doing work
essential to industry which industrialists do not or
will not do for themselves? For example, Faraday's

RAISING THE ISSUES

electromagnetic discoveries and his investigations of
the constitution of benzene, conducted at the Royal
Institution, were ultimately accepted by industrialists,
but the work was not initiated by them, fundamental as
it was. It had to be done at an academic institution.

J H. That, I think, is certainly true. The indus-
trialists of Faraday's day did not even see the possi-
bility of applying it for quite a number of years Or we
might take the researches on heredity begun by Mendel
and carried on for a long time almost entirely m
University laboratories, on more or less useless animals
like flies and mice and shrimps. But they are now
finding important and useful applications m plant
and animal breeding.

In the present condition of world affairs, it looks
definitely as if industry is on the whole unwilling, and
apparently unable, either to provide the broad scien-
tific background of research out of which new applica-
tions grow or to undertake large-scale and fundamental
investigations which do not promise fairly immediate
returns. On the whole, it is fair to say that the*
Universities provide the background, and Government
institutions (like the National Physical Laboratory and
other branches of the Department of Scientific and
Industrial Research) carry out the long-term inves-
tigations.

H, L. So you agree that Universities, whatever else
they are doing, are unconsciously playing their part in
assisting industrialists to carry on their business ?

J. H. Yes, that is so. Of course, the Universities;/
like any other social institutions, cannot help doing
something to serve the ends of the society in which they
have grown up. But helping industrialists is only one

RAISING THE ISSUES

side even of this aspect of Universities They may
help to cheapen production so that prices can be
brought down, and also help to stimulate new invent-
ions, and so to cater for needs that have hitherto not
been satisfied.

H L. Yes, science has been used m this way, but
even this analysis of yours is surety incomplete. There
is a real distinction between two possible ways in which
science operates. First, science may serve certain
social and individual needs directly, by stimulating our
intellectual and philosophical interest It may expose
the false basis to many of the beliefs we have inherited
from the past, and provide us with assured knowledge
on which to reconstruct our view of life and of society.
It assists, m fact, to sharpen our critical sense and
to enlarge our outlook Secondly, however, science
comes to society indirectly. It may be used by those
who have made it their business to cater for more
immediate practical social needs Before the results
of science get to society by this route, it has to be
worth these people's while to use it. For the moment,
however, we will leave that. Meanwhile I would like
to hear more of what you intend to do in your survey.

J. H . Well, as I said at the beginning, I shall be
trying to find out what science is doing in this country
to cater for its social needs. And the way I propose
to divide up the field is roughly this. I shall take
obvious needs like food, clothing, building and shelter,
transport, and health, and see what science is doing to
help there. Then there is the relation of science to
industry in general — where the funds come from, and
how the research is planned and controlled; there is
the assistance that scientists are giving in preparing

RAISING THE ISSUES

for war, and the question of what the psychological
side of science is doing to ease the mental tensions set
up by society. And, of course, there will be something
to say as to the scope of what we have just been dis-
cussing : namely, science for its own sake — what is
being done in the way of pure science in the Univer-
sities, and of amateur science carried on as a hobby.

H L Then does there not still remain the question
of how science is actually organized to do all this
work ?

J. H. Yes, I was coming to that You have only
got to think for a moment to realize that the work is
carried out in the most varied ways Some is done in
laboratories attached to private firms, some in Uni-
versities, some in Government institutions, some
through scientific and other societies, some in research
laboratories financed by industries, some with the help
of international organizations I shall try to see
examples of all these types. In particular, I want to
see if I can find out something about the imperfections
and gaps in our scientific organization.

H. L. Well, this survey of yours is going to be a
big job, isn't it ?

j ■ h. Yes, indeed — such a big job that I shall only
be able to deal with a small part of each field. All the
same, I think I shall be able to make a survey which
will give a useful general picture of the whole subject,
and will bring out the co-ordination of all the scattered
work, as far as it is co-ordinated at all. And at the
end I suppose you will want to come back and ask me
some more of these troublesome questions !

H. L. Well, if I ask you troublesome questions, it is
because science must needs be associated with trouble-

RAISING THE ISSUES

some things But I should really like you to discover
during your survey the answers to one or two diffi-
culties I have You know how glibly people talk about
science being open, published for all, and working for
the benefit of humanity. I wonder if you are not likely
to find that a good deal of research for private firms is
conducted in secrecy, so that the scientific knowledge
is kept within the factory walls and used for private
profit only, while these same firms are busy, as you
have agreed, m absorbing the fundamental scientific
work which is done outside their walls in public insti-
tutions. And then again, I wonder how much research
is conducted primarily for national purposes — informa-
tion and ideas which this country must keep to itself
in order that British industrialists, and British War
Departments too, may compete successfully against the
foreigner. This may all sound very nasty, but I am
raising the question because, if what I am hinting at
is true, we must give up all this clap-trap about science
always being the benefactor of humanity at large and
international in all its aspects.

J. H. Well, that grows naturally out of the pro-
gramme I have just outlined.

H. L. Then there is another point. You and I,
Huxley, seem to be assuming that industry can absorb
as much science as scientists can produce. I wonder
how far you may find science running to waste.
What I mean is just this. The scientific movement
measures success in the application of its work when
it produces the machinery^ for plenty — when, for
instance, it makes four ears of corn grow where one
grew before— but nowadays we are beginning to realize
that success in industry often demands scarcity and

RAISING THE ISSUES

high prices. You talk about scientific applications to
agriculture, but at the same time politicians and
industry are restricting production, and that, mark
you, side by side with unsatisfied needs and even
starvation all over the world. Does it not look as if
those who are to supply the needs of the community
are in a cleft stick ? They dare only use science in a
very restricted form.

J. H. Let me get this clear. Are you implying
that science is responsible for over-production : in fact,
that the world is suffering from too much science ?

H. L . Oh, no. That is the wrong way to put it.
There is plenty of scope for science. But just where
science is most needed, the present order of society is
incapable of absorbing it. Agriculture is a case in
point, but there are plenty of other examples.

J. H. Naturally, that is important, and I shall
certainly keep an. eye open for examples of that sort.
But meanwhile we live in a capitalist world, and science
and scientists have to take the organization of industry
as they find it.

if. L . Yes, naturally. But I think it is important
we should see the contradiction between some of the
ideals that the ordinary layman and the scientist have
about science and the way it actually functions Take
this question of nationalism, for example. The
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research is a
Government organization which exists definitely to
promote British industry as against the industries of
other countries I am not complaining about that — it
does its job very efficiently indeed — but I think it is
important that we should see that science is being
used for this nationalist purpose, and we must not

Teddington. An aerial view, 193

Gas masks are useful in peace as well as war. A new type of gas
mask for mine rescue work designed as the result of research by the
Safety in Mines Research Board: the air is breathed through a
canister containing manganese dioxide and copper oxide to protect
rescue workers from carbon monoxide and other poisonous gases
formed after an explosion. With this type of mask, the rescuers
need not carry oxygen cylinders to breathe with. (See pp. 159, 179-)
From Safety in Coal Mines .* Some Problems of Research.

By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

RAISING THE ISSUES

pretend that it is not, by proclaiming that science is
international.

J. H. That, too, I suppose, is inevitable, so long as
the world is organized into national sovereign states.
And, of course, this has a further consequence — namely,
that every nation has to devote a good deal of its
scientific energy to research which is to be of use in
war.

H. L. I see. So that science here plays a vital part
in a consequence of nationalism — namely, war. Are
you, then, also proposing to look into this side of
scientific research? That will be interesting, if you
can discover much about it.

J . H Yes, naturally that cannot be left out. But
meanwhile do not let us forget that research which is
undertaken or financed primarily for war needs may
have results that are useful for all sorts of peace-time
purposes. Aviation would never have developed as
rapidly as it has if it had not been for the Great War.
Research m the optical glass industry has a background
of war-time ends ; but it gives us better field-glasses
and camera lenses and microscopes in times of peace
Gas-masks for use m coal-mines and industrial occupa-
tions have been improved owing to research to protect
soldiers and civilians from poison gas used for military
ends. Or again, the need of understanding and curing
the thousands of so-called “ shell-shock ” cases during
the War was responsible for a remarkable advance in
psychological science, which is now being of the greatest
service in dealing with peace-time disorders.

H. L. Well, it is not necessary to justify war that
way. Actually, war follows naturally out of the
struggle for markets, and I anticipate that you will

RAISING THE ISSUES

see how science is being used to intensify the one and
prepare for the other But let us pass to a less un-
savoury subject, from the destruction of human life
to its conservation. Do you propose to see whether
science is being used to its full extent for the health of
the community ? Is it the case that research into, say,
industrial fatigue is conducted in the interests of
the workers, or primarily for increased efficiency of
production ?

J. H. That is going to be rather a difficult question
to answer. But I expect to have something to say
on the more general problem of whether scientific
knowledge, in this field of the nation's health, is really
being used to the fullest possible extent, and as a
matter of fact I can tell you beforehand that it is not.

H. L. I guessed as much. And now, Huxley, let
us hear a little more about the international aspect of
science. It is peculiar that it should have this aspect,
considering the fact that, as we have seen, it is used
so much for national purposes. There would appear
here surely to be two conflicting currents at work.

/. H . Yes, that arises from what I said before. There
is in science something that inevitably is universal,
because it springs from the fundamental human
impulse of curiosity, of wanting to know for the sake
of knowing, v But there is also the desire to control
events and things for use and profit, and this gets
tangled up with industry and nationalism, while the
other is always tending to transcend such limitations.

H . L. Well, enough of theory — what about in-
ternational science in practice ?

J . H. Oh, there are, of course, plenty of examples
ready to hand. For instance, one of the most efficient

RAISING THE ISSUES

remedies for African sleeping sickness is a drug called
Bayer 205. This was discovered in a German research
laboratory, but finds its chief use in British, French,
and Belgian colonies. Then there is the famous
example of the synthetic aniline dyes which scientists
produce out of coal-tar. The original discovery of the
methods was made m England, but Germany was the
only country to make commercial application of them
for many years afterwards

H. L. Yes, that is so But the reason for that is
interesting We must remember that Britain at
that period held a well-assured position m the world
markets, while German manufacturers were struggling
to secure a foothold. Thus they were on the alert to
use science at once for that purpose, backed by the
German State. Thus, in Germany, under the drive of
her industrial needs, industrial research institutions
came into existence earlier than here, where they were
largely stimulated by the Great War. So when you
say that science is international, is it not the case that
it is simply those elements of science very remote from
industrial application that are international? That
is, of course, a great deal, as scientific journals testify —
three-quarters of a million scientific and technical
contributions every year !

J. H. Yes ; but in spite of all you say about
nationalism m science, I do not think many laymen
realize the extent of the international side of science —
the interchange of brains from one country to another
by means of research fellowships, exchange professor-
ships, and so on; the congresses at which scientists
of all nations take part ; the way in which a discovery
made in one country is taken up almost at once in

RAISING THE ISSUES

another. What is clear, I think, is that science is
trying to work on a lot of different levels, so to speak —
sometimes in the service of a single firm, sometimes
in that of a single industry, or again m the service of a
single nation or empire, and finally on the international
level, where discoveries are announced freely, and
fully published so as to be available to humanity at
large.

H . L. So to that extent science, like the scramble
for trade, is riven by conflicting tendencies — inter-
national publication, national secrecy, trade secrecy,
the ideals of scientific men.

J. H. Yes, I am afraid that is so And I shall try,
if I can, to lay my finger on particular cases where
competitive secrecy is interfering with scientific ideals.

H. L. Do you propose also examining where the
gaps he m the field of scientific study ?

J. H. What exactly are you thinking of ?

H. L Well, if one of the mam driving forces that
determines the direction of research — I do not say it is
the only one — is this need for help from science on the
part of those who undertake production, then the scope
of scientific inquiry is likely to be affected by this fact.
For example, do scientists know why production has
gone down to such a low ebb, in spite of the marvellous
achievements of science? Before the War, it has
been argued, we had crises associated with over-
production, and now at the present moment, in spite
of the refinements of science in production, we have a
world-wide crisis, with actual under-production and
widespread restriction of output. The Economic
Conference brought that out, at any rate. Have
scientists reached agreement on that issue, or do you

RAISING THE ISSUES

think it is not even a suitable subject for scientific
study ?

J. H. Why, certainly, any subject is capable of
being examined by the scientific method. For instance,
most industrial research is aimed at making production
more efficient. But why should not the State, through
the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research,
set going a really scientific investigation on the problem
of how to stimulate consumption ? Consumption is
just as much a problem for scientific research as is
production Only, owing to our economic system, it
has been nobody's business to apply scientific ideas
to it.

H. L. Yes, but I should like to see added to that
problem this : should it be found possible to discover
the underlying causes of all these contradictions, is it
likely that those who have the power to act so as to
resolve them, will agree to taking the necessary steps ?
It may hit them badly, you know. Even scientists
themselves are not likely to be unbiased m such
matters

J. H. I quite agree. , It means that we must
regard society itself as a proper object for scientific
treatment, which is a rather revolutionary idea. At
the moment, for instance, educational policy has no
scientific basis, but is determined by all sorts of un-
scientific motives, such as political pressure, religious
feeling, and mere tradition. And then there is the
point you make about general bias. Now that is
something so unconscious with most people that I
do not thmk they are even aware of it. Even scientists,
with a few exceptions, are not aw T are of the fact that
they are biased, and would be indignant if you told

RAISING THE ISSUES

them that they were. And of course when people get
indignant about anything, it is generally a sign that
they have not thought scientifically on the subject. The
scientific movement is an outgrowth of society, and
cannot help being influenced by the form of the society
from which it springs.

H. L Yes. For that reason the more fundamental
social problems have been kept m scientific darkness :
the light has not been turned on problems of social
structure, causes of war, the social bias m education,
the basis of religious belief, the rationale of sex, and
so on. In fact, our form of society has rendered them
almost taboo to anything that could be called scientific
treatment

J. H. Yes, what we need now, it seems to me, is a
change of outlook — a feeling that science should be
asked to help m tackling such problems, that we ought
to arrange for more of the best brains to go into the
study of society, that the Government ought to organ-
ize research on social subjects as it already does on
industry and agriculture and health. That would be
a revolutionary change.

H. L. It would indeed. But you may recollect
that you agreed that institutions reflected the bias of
the society in which they developed. Government
and the State are such institutions : they tacitly
assume the permanence and the structure of present-
day society, and therefore their use of science necessarily
also reflects their bias.

J. H. Yes, that is true enough ; but you must
have a beginning somewhere, and, whatever you say,
a change of the sort I suggested would be revolutionary.
What is more, there are signs that at last the scientists

RAISING THE ISSUES

themselves are coming alive to the existence and
importance of this problem. For instance, the British
Association has just decided to devote a large part of
its time at this year's meeting in Aberdeen to con-
sidering the social bearings of scientific work Do
you not think that is an interesting symptom ?

H . L. Well, it is clearly a very important matter
and one that strikes radically at the whole problem of
the use of science m society It is as critical for science
as it is for society.

J. H. Yes, I agree But meanwhile I shall have
to get on with my survey, and I think we must leave
this question to be dealt with m our final discussion,
with all the facts m front of us It may turn out that
this is, after all, the most important social need for
which science could possibly cater.

H. L. Well, it is not becoming for scientific men to
talk of luck, but you will certainly need it ! Good-bye.

CHAPTER III

SCIENCE AND FOOD

F OOD is not merely a social need * it is a biological
one. All the same, as society grows in size and com-
plexity, the needs connected with food get more varied
and more elaborated. To-day a large portion of the
population live m big towns, so that the transport and
distribution of everyday articles of diet, especially
perishable ones like milk or fish, have become a serious
problem To-day, too, people want food from all
over the world — think of West Indian bananas, New
Zealand mutton, Californian grape-fruit, Argentine
beef. And this involves even bigger problems of
transport and distribution. Then, with the growth of
transport facilities, the natural tendency has been for
food to be grown intensively, often on an enormous
scale — as on the Canadian wheat-farms or the South
American cattle-ranches — in the regions of the world
best suited to its production, and then exported.
Food-production is now largely a capitalist business
enterprise carried out on a world-scale. And this,
of course, has sharpened competition. The result is
that there is a premium on certain kinds of improve-
ments at every stage of the business — the making of
new varieties of food-plants and food-animals, the
technique of growing and rearing them, their storage
and preservation in transit ; and at every point science
has been called in to help in making these improvements.

SCIENCE AND FOOD

In a single chapter I obviously cannot cover all
these applications of science to this great problem of
our food. So I shall take one or two threads and see
where they lead.

My story ought to have begun with a visit to the
Abbe MendeF s garden m the monastery at Brno, in
Czechoslovakia. But Mendel died before I was born,
and even if I had been privileged to visit him and see
his work, I could never have foreseen all that has grown
out of it. So I will begin with the School of Agriculture
in Cambridge, where I called on Sir Rowland Biffen.

Mendel's work was published in 1865, and lay un-
noticed between the covers of a rather obscure scientific
journal for thirty-five years When it was unearthed
again m 1900, it was immediately seen to be of out-
standing importance to the science of heredity. Among
the men who saw its importance was William Bateson
of Cambridge, and it was through his insight and
enthusiasm that Cambridge soon became a centre for
research in this new branch of science.

The essence of Mendelism is that hereditary char-
acters are determined by definite unit particles which
are handed on from parent to offspring m the re-
productive cells, and that, owing to the microscopic
machinery of those cells, the hereditary units can be
shuffled and re-dealt in new ways. This is quite
contrary to the older ideas of heredity, which usually
assumed that the characters of the parents became
permanently blended in the offspring, more or less
as coloured mk blends with water. Mendelism showed
that there was no blending, but that, by means of
properly-planned crosses, the various characters of
different races can be taken to bits, so to speak, and

SCIENCE AND FOOD

reassembled almost at will in all kinds of new and pure-
breedmg combinations

For obvious practical reasons of space and time,
most of the early work on this new branch of science
was done on small and, if possible, quick-breeding
species — mice, primroses, flies, sweet peas, and the
like — irrespective of their usefulness or uselessness to
man. But soon it became clear that Mendel’s laws
were general, and that they applied to every variety
of character m every kind of animal and plant ; and
then, naturally, scientists began to try to apply their
knowledge to practical ends.

Thus Biffen's very practical work grew naturally
out of the pioneer studies of Mendel and Bateson. If
they were right, then it should be possible to build
up new varieties of plants and animals by deliberate
crosses, instead of confining yourself to slow selection —
just as modern chemistry deliberately makes new
substances by basing itself on the atomic theory,
instead of mixing things in hit-or-miss fashion in a
test-tube. This is what Biffen set himself to do with
wheat.

Let me take one example of his work. He aimed
at combining resistance to rust disease, which he found
in an otherwise poor strain of wheat, with the high
yield of one of the best cropping strains. So he
crossed the two : — and the offspring were all susceptible
to disease ! This would have been discouraging to
the older breeders — but not to a Mendelian, who knows
that characters can be masked for a generation, but
can still be bred out pure in later generations. In
his crosses he introduced also the character of “ hard ”
grain, rich in gluten, which the millers asked for, and

SCIENCE AND FOOD

strong straw to prevent the plants from being too
easily “ laid ” by storms, and succeeded in combining
the characters he wanted after several generations of
planned crossing and selection.

The tw T o mam strains he manufactured thus were
called Little Joss and Yeoman. Although not put on
the market till 1912 and 1917 respectively, by 1927
they occupied about a third of all the world’s wheat-
lands.

However, Yeoman does not suit all soils, especially
clays and light sands; and now one of Biffen’s chief
aims is to make new types of Yeoman — by breeding in
new features from other strains — which will suit every
kind of wheat land in Britain. It is on this problem
that he is mainly busy. Besides that, he is trying to
manufacture a spring wheat suitable for this country.
Spring wheats are not necessary with our mild winters ;
but the introduction of sugar-beet, which is not har-
vested until November or December, has made it
desirable to have a spring wheat to put on land that has
been under beet the previous year.

I shall come back to Biffen and his wheats in a
minute ; but first let me take you to Professor Crew’s
Department at Edinburgh, which is designed to do for
the breeding of animals what Sir Rowland Biffen’s
Institute aims to do for that of plants. I asked Crew
what he thought were the most important practical
results that his laboratory had achieved, and he
answered, Bull-dog calves, for one thing, and the
inheritance of milk-production for another. Bull-dog
calves are a form of monstrosity which occurred with
increasing frequency m the Dexter breed of cattle :
they sometimes occurred to the tune of 20 or 25 per

SCIENCE AND FOOD

cent, of all births, and some breeders were giving up
their herds. Crew undertook to analyse the matter on
Mendelian principles. He showed that you were bound
to expect a high percentage of these monstrosities if
you followed certain principles of breeding. What is
more, he showed that if you followed certain other
principles, you would no longer get any “ bull-dogs ”
bom.

The investigation on milk-production began with an
examination of all the herd-books which the Depart-
ment could get from breeders — a task which obviously
only a big central institution could undertake. The
milk records of thousands of cows were studied, and
also their pedigrees. This showed, as clearly as any
paper analysis without actual breeding experiments
can show, that the tendency to high milk-production
was due largely to what scientists call sex-linked
inheritance, which is a special case of Mendelian
inheritance. A sex-linked factor means something
which a father transmits to all his daughters, but to
none of his sons. A male, on the other hand, can only
receive it from his mother. A well-known example
from human beings is excessive bleeding or haemophilia
— the disease which the Russian Tsarevitch had. He
got the hereditary factor for bleeding through his
mother, and if he had lived and married, could only
have passed it on through his daughters.

Most hereditary factors, of course, are transmitted
equally from father or mother to all offspring of either
sex. You will readily see that if a sex-linked factor
enters into milk-production, breeders must use quite a
different system of breeding from the ordinary. For
instance, if you find a bull which sires a large number

SCIENCE AND FOOD

of high-yielckric cows, instead of keeping his sons to
breed from, as yon would naturally expect, you must
reject them all — for none of them will have inherited
the father's good qualities

What Crew would like to do is to test this out by
actual experiment ; but this would take years and be
pretty costly, and at the moment he cannot get the
money for such an experiment However, it is clear,
I think, that he is on the track of something which could
put up the average milk-yield of the cows of this country
by anything fiom 20 to 40 or perhaps even 50 per cent.
And the work which first gave us our understanding of
sex-linked factors and enabled Crew to spot one when
he saw its results in the herd-books, was carried out at
Cambridge University on moths and at Columbia
University on flies

Now let us go back to Biffen and his wheats. It is
not enough to breed new varieties which seem all right
on the experimental plot. They must be tested out
under commercial conditions before they can be safely
recommended to farmers. Biffen's own department
cannot very well do this, and as a matter of fact the
business is entrusted to the National Institute of
Agricultural Botany.

Testing is just as important in its way as breeding,
for each variety will behave differently m different
conditions of soils and climate ; and the Institute, with
its six testing stations in different parts of the country,
helps with this. It would be a good thing if there
were more stations, covering the country still more
thoroughly, but meanwhile the Institute supplies this
necessary link m a pretty adequate way.

Then we must not forget the soil. There are a few

SCIENCE AND FOOD

soils which are rich enough to dispense with chemical
treatment, but with most soils you must put fertilizer
on if the plant is to take out all it needs for optimum
growth. The fundamentals of this branch of science
are studied at the big Experimental Station at Rotham-
sted, directed by Sir John Russell, and many detailed
soil problems are being worked out at the Experimental
Farm belonging to Imperial Chemical Industries at
Jealott’s Hill.

I have not space to say much about this work, except
that it is extremely important. It is only by careful
studies, year after year, that we can find out how to
bring land to its full yielding capacity and keep it there.
And our present knowledge, if properly applied, would
make it possible to bring off much bigger crops,
especially with plants other than wheat, — such as oats
or potatoes ; and also with grass. But grass is animal
food, not human food, and that brings me back to the
question of how science can help with live-stock
raising.

With regard to animals, the problem is more com-
plicated than with plants, because there is an extra
link in it — namely, the plants which the animals eat.
Let us look at some of the points that arise. You may
have the most wonderful breed of cattle or sheep in the
world ; but if you put them on poor pasture they will
not do well. In fact, on really poor pasture they will
do a good deal worse than much inferior stock, because
to live and grow at all they need more and better food
than the mediocre beasts. The pasture, in its turn,
may be poor because it consists of poor kinds of grasses,
or because it is growing on soil which is deficient in
some important substance, like iron, or lime, or phos-

SCIENCE AND FOOD

phorus. Further, the soil may be naturally deficient
in the substance — for instance, there are big areas of
the middle west of America where (owing to the ice-
sheets of the glacial period) there is practically no iodine
m the soil, and therefore human beings are unusually
prone to develop goitre, and pigs are often born hairless
and soon die. Or man may have caused the deficiency
by constantly taking stuff out of the soil m the shape
of the lime and phosphorus m the bones and meat of his
animals, the iron in their blood, and so on, and never
putting any back in the shape of fertilizer.

Two splendid Institutions I visited are especially
concerned with these problems — the Welsh Plant-
breeding Station at Aberystwyth and the Rowett
Institute for the Study of Animal Nutrition at Aber-
deen, both of them largely financed from State funds.
Let me begin with the latter. From its start m 1922
the work here has been directed by Dr. John Orr, and
has had the general purpose of finding out the relation
between diet and disease, both m animals and in men.
The researches started on these lines have not only
revealed how to cure a number of obvious diseases, but
have also shown that many animals and people who
could never be classified as diseased are really suffering
from slight deficiencies of diet, and that their health
and vigour can be increased — often starthngly increased
— if the diet is corrected. So that, instead of the rather
negative idea of remedying obvious disease, the positive
aim of promoting health through diet is gradually
becoming dominant in the Institute.

I will only give one main sample of the work done
here — the kind of laborious work which obviously can
be undertaken only by a national institution with a

SCIENCE AND FOOD

long-term policy and regular funds at its disposal. It
concerned the nature of the diet afforded by different
pastures to the live-stock of this island. To start with,
a pasture survey was made. Samples of herbage from
nearly 400 different localities were taken and carefully
analysed chemically. One thing that early emerged
was that almost any pasture, even the best-looking,
could be improved both m the quantity and quality
of its yield by adding the proper fertilizers. The next
and perhaps more important point was that the great
bulk of the hill pastures, which occupy such enormous
tracts of our country, especially in Scotland and Wales,
were badly below standard in regard to the amount of
lime and phosphorus m the herbage they grow; and
further, that this lack of the minerals necessary for
bone-growth and for health in the animals pastured on
them was almost always linked up with a deficiency m
the nitrogen needed to build up flesh.

It was further pretty clear that, in general, low
mineral content of the pastures went hand in hand with
a high incidence of disease in the stock — mostly sheep —
which grazed them; but to get accurate information
on this, the Institute found it necessary to buy a farm
of its own in Argyllshire, where careful experiment has
been going on for nearly four years. This farm, in the
mineral content of its herbage, is near the average of
hill pastures. The experiments have shown that sheep
on this farm not only did not get enough lime and
phosphorus for healthy growth at any time of the year,
but in the winter months were not getting enough sheer
nourishment, as measured in the energy-units that
physiologists call calories. In winter-time, to get full
health and reasonable growth, it was necessary to

SCIENCE AND FOOD

supplement the herbage with extra nutriment such as
maize, and also extra minerals — or else to treat the soil
beforehand with a fertilizer which would supply the
deficiencies.

Further, it appears not only that a large area of the
Scottish hill pasture is deficient m lime and other vital
substances, but also that the deficiency has been getting
steadily worse for the last fifty years or so. It seems
clear that by a proper use of mineral fertilizers on the
pastures, or by extra mineral-containing rations for the
stock, the carrying capacity of hill pastures could be at
least doubled — that man could make two sheep grow
where only one grew before.

As a startling example of what proper feeding and
careful management can do, I might mention that this
year a cow at the Institute was made to rear no fewer
than eleven calves m a single milk-period, in place of
the two to four which is the usual number !

But before mentioning any more of the thoughts
which come into one's head about the Row r ett Institute's
work, I would like to tell you something of what I saw
at Aberystwyth under the guidance of its director,
Professor Stapledon.

Professor Stapledon is an enthusiast about pasture
plants in general and grasses m particular. I should
imagine that he know r s more about grasses and clovers
than any other man m the world. I have not the time
to do more than just mention the special bits of research
that are going on at his Institute : an experiment with
red clover involving half a million artificial crosses
between different strains; work w r hich is aimed at
providing a new r type of white clover better than the
ordinary Dutch strain ; breeding and selection expert-

SCIENCE AND FOOD

merits with oats and different kinds of grasses. These
last, by the way, have an interest of a general kind.
Most researches of the sort set out to breed a variety
which will give bigger yield or better growth in the most
favourable conditions. But Stapledon, with the Welsh
hills all round him, has his eye on the uplands, and his
work is to select for unfavourable conditions — to make
it possible for a richer kind of grass to grow m place of
the usual moorland bents

But the most obviously exciting work is going on
high up in the mountains. Long years of careful
research on a comparatively small scale had convinced
Stapledon that he could change the whole character of
the hill vegetation for the better. Last year Sir Julien
Cahn gave a considerable sum of money to put these
ideas to the test on a large scale. With this money
Stapledon purchased two tracts of land, one between
900 and 1300 feet up, another bigger one above the
1500-foot level. Both are just rough mountain pasture,
yielding only a scanty nourishment to sheep even in
summer. In winter the flocks from such areas have to
be sent down and boarded out at so much a head on the
pastures of lowland farms.

At the time of my visit at the end of September, the
upland pastures were all turning ashen brown. Here
and there, however, areas of summery green showed
in the autumnal landscape. These were patches which
Stapledon had treated according to his methods only a
short six months before. They were covered with
typical lowland grasses, which continue leafing much
later than the types adapted to the bleak moorlands,
and with a good proportion of clover.

Briefly, Stapledon has discovered that practically

mperial Bureau of Plant Genetics : Herbage Plants .

Turning rough mountain moorland into rich pasture. The first step— breaking up the existing surface.
Photograph taken at 1200 feet above sea-level. ( See p. 44.)

lly courtesy oj Professor 7 ?. ( ', . Stapledon , Welsh Plant Breeding Station, Aberystwyth.

SCIENCE AND FOOD

any hillside, at least up to the 2000-foot level, can be
turned into pasture of lowland type by combining three
procedures. The first is to get rid of the existing
vegetation and to break up the soil; the second is to
sow with the right mixture of grass and clover seeds,
and the third is to supply the right blend of mineral
fertilizers. Once this is done, proper grazing, with
the occasional addition of fertilizer, will keep the
pastures m condition.

Each of these three procedures has its long back-
ground of scientific and technical research. The first
would be impossible without the development of the
caterpillar tractor in the last ten years or so, to pull
agricultural implements over otherwise inaccessible
hillsides The right kind of tractors are already
available ; but the right kind of implements is now the
practical core of the problem. Ploughing would do,
but is expensive anyhow, and the ploughshares often
get broken on stones. Harrowing is another method;
scraping, as for aerodrome surfaces or road-grading,
another. Up in one corner of the moor is a collection
of different types of implements that are being tried
out. Perhaps a special one will have to be designed.
But the finding of the right method here is now merely
a matter of time and experiment.

Then there is the second procedure — of sowing the
right seed mixture. The background to this is long
experience, and also years of rigorous selection, by
which Stapledon has manufactured types of lowland
grasses which will stand up to hill conditions. And
back of the third procedure — of supplying the right
fertilizer — is nearly a century of experiment, beginning
with the pioneer work of Lawes and Gilbert at Rotham-

SCIENCE AND FOOD

sted in the early Victorian era. None of the procedures
alone, or in couples, will do. All three are needed to
establish the richer and more lasting pasture.

The lowland type of pasture thus established has all
sorts of advantages. For one thing, it is more nutritious
in itself ; and, perhaps more important, it begins pro-
viding nutriment much earlier in the year and goes on
providing it much longer. With such pastures avail-
able, the hill fanners would be able to graze many more
sheep on the same land, and to keep them all the year
round, instead of incurring the trouble and expense of
boarding them out in the lowlands in winter. And
there would be other advantages concerned with rearing
fat lambs for sale at the best time for the market.

When you consider that nearly a quarter of the area
of Great Britain consists of mountain and rough hill
grazings, you will realize what a staggering change
could be made by putting the results of these researches
into practice. Even if the results were only applied
up to 1500 feet, the change would be enormous.

And now I ought to say something as to the general
ideas which I got from what I have seen. In the first
place, the fundamental research is, without doubt, well
organized and ably directed In plant and animal
breedmg, grass research, animal nutrition, soil science,
fisheries, food storage, the study of the animal and
plant enemies and parasites of crops, our British labor-
atories, such as those at Cambridge, Edinburgh,
Aberystwyth, Aberdeen, Hull, Rothamsted, South
Kensington, JealotCs Hill, backed up by the agri-
cultural colleges and the University departments
concerned with agriculture, are doing work of out-
standing quality— original and vitally important.

SCIENCE AND FOOD

But practically all the research men I have talked to
showed an interesting mixture of optimism and pessim-
ism. They all knew the scientific importance of their
own work, and were convinced of its possible value for
practice ; several of them said to me that a doubling of
the present amount of food grown in this country was
not only perfectly possible, but a modest estimate of
what could be achieved by applying the scientific
knowledge which exists That, by the way, would
make these islands self-supporting in regard to most
foodstuffs (though not wheat)

But m contrast with this optimism as to possibilities
was a certain pessimism as to actualities What is the
good of doubling the number of sheep m the country if
sheep prices may fall so low as to wipe out any reason-
able profit to the farmer ? What is the good of invent-
ing new brands of wheat that will make it possible to
grow more bushels of wheat to the acre or to push wheat
cultivation nearer the pole, if the world's wheat-
producers have on their hands vast surpluses they
cannot dispose of profitably and are clamouring for a
restriction of output and cultivation? What is the
good of inventing new methods of cold storage which
enable ships to ransack the recesses of the Arctic Ocean
for fish, if a large proportion of the annual catch is
thrown away or disposed of for manure ?

Then, of course, there is the conflict between home
and empire. What about New Zealand mutton and
Australian beef if we double our own live-stock, or
Canadian wheat and apples if we increase the home
output ? And there still remains the problem of the
balance between agriculture and industry. If we are
to go on exporting coal and steel and machinery and

SCIENCE AND FOOD

motor-cars to other countries, they must be paid for
by our taking something in exchange from those coun-
tries : foodstuffs are one of the biggest items in that
balance-sheet

Then there are the conflicts of interests at home
There is the interest of the breeder of pedigree cattle of
a certain breed against the general livestock interest;
that of the seedsman as against the fanner ; of the wool
merchant against the sheep-breeder ; of the middle-man
as against the producer and the consumer — one could
go on almost indefinitely 1

The outlook, mind you, is not all black. Much of the
scientific results could be applied to-morrow to bring
down cost for the farmers, and so make it possible for
many more of them to make a decent assured profit,
instead of scraping along in a hand-to-mouth way, or
even falling over the edge into failure. But that is
looking at the problem from the producer's angle only :
the consumer is another matter. And there for the
moment the trouble is serious. You have very large
sections of our 40 millions of people not getting all they
would like to eat, and quite considerable sections
definitely getting too little for full health and growth
and energy ; and yet there is restriction of output and
even destruction of food, as when herrings are thrown
away or milk poured down the drains to keep the
price up.

That, however, is not the fault of science, but of our
economic system, and how that is to be remedied is a
question for economists and administrators. Mean-
while it does lie like a barrier across our hopes for a well-
nourished, healthy nation. But the hopes are there,
and if the barrier of the economic system seems strong,

SCIENCE AND FOOD

the basis of the hope is strong too ! And that basis is
the certitude that science, if its existing knowledge were
properly applied, could at least double the amount of
food we produce m these little islands, and could put
up world-production to a level at which there would be
enough and to spare for the 2000 million human beings
m existence.

CHAPTER IV

SCIENCE AND BUILDING

I N this chapter I want to say something about science
in its relation to the art and business of building
and construction, and I want to begin by asking you to
think of the rather curious contrast between the motor
industry and the building industry. Here, as else-
where, the Great War makes a convenient landmark.
In the years since the end of the War, the quality and
convenience of motor-cars have been improved out of
all recognition, their price has in general gone down,
and the supply has been adequate to meet the demand.
With houses, on the other hand, the supply has been
far from adequate, their price has in general gone up,
and their quality and convenience have remained
stationary, or at best been slightly improved.

This contrast is undoubtedly linked up with the
contrast in the method of production in the two cases.
With motor-cars, the outstanding features are rapid
mass-production in the factory on the one hand, and
on the other intensive research and invention, with
speedy utilization of their results. With houses, on
the contrary, the structure is slowly built up on the
site, and it is fair to say that traditional methods both
of production and construction have remained in the
saddle.

There is, however, a further fact. There have not

SCIENCE AND BUILDING 51

been wanting men to notice this contrast, and to try
to remedy it by applying the methods of mass-pro-
duction and modern technology to housing. At one
time, for instance, it was steel houses that were going
to revolutionize the industry, at another cottages made
of concrete cast m moulds. But so far none of these
attempts has been wholly successful. Some of the
reasons for this have at first sight seemed to be uncon-
nected with the merits of the schemes — for instance, the
resistance of the building trades unions to the schemes
for providing steel houses, on the ground that they
would not only throw the traditional building crafts
into chaos, but would also largely substitute unskilled
for skilled labour. But m the final reckoning, the
reason for the failure of these projects is that they have
deserved to fail — because they have not provided an
article suited for its purpose.

One frequent trouble with the steel houses, for in-
stance, was corrosion of the steel skin. Men used to steel
construction m other fields, such as shipbuilding, reply
that they have got over the corrosion trouble there.
To do so, however, means constant painting at frequent
intervals ; and to have an army of painters going over
all the houses in a neighbourhood as often as they go
over a ship's hull would mean a radical change in out-
look on the part of builders, local authorities, and, most
of all, of the occupiers of the houses, to whom it would
be an infernal nuisance, let alone preventing them
growing creepers up their walls. Another trouble was
condensation : the houses were cheap to put up, but
when they were lived in, it was found that moisture
often condensed on their ceilings and walls in a most
unpleasant way.

52 SCIENCE AND BUILDING

In other words, the problem had been looked at from
the standpoint of cheap construction only ; the comfort
and convenience of the user had not been properly taken
into account.

So far, that has been the trouble with all attempts to
apply mass-production to housing ; the promoters have
forgotten to think of all the needs which a good house
stands for. Of course, shelter is the most obvious need
catered for by a house. But shelter does not mean
merely having a roof over your head : it means also
being protected from cold and wet; and, further, it
means privacy — protection from the distractions of the
rest of the world, and especially from noise.

The old type of house, produced by traditional
methods without any thought of science, did on the
whole stand up to all these demands. When properly
built, its thick walls of brick or stone allowed only a
slow passage of heat, so that rooms could be kept warm
in winter and cool in summer ; they did not allow the
rain to come through, nor permit much condensation
of moisture inside ; and on the whole they cut off noise
very efficiently. On the other hand, such houses took
a long time to put up, and used a very large amount of
material.

The one really radical change in building methods
which is based upon science is the modern framed
building of steel or reinforced concrete. This makes
possible a considerable economy in construction by
demanding less material in the walls : the frame takes
all the weight, and the walls, relieved of bhe need for
providing support, can be made much thinner. But
when you try to effect this economy, you are at once up
against difficulties. If you economize on outer walls.

SCIENCE AND BUILDING

you are likely to lose heat too quickly ; if you economize
on inner walls, you are likely to get noise passing too
easily from room to room (Where the building is a
block of flats, this is especially serious : members of a
family tolerate each other's noise much more readily
than they do the noise made by the family next door »)
In addition, the new construction brings new difficulties
of its own : the pipes, steel beams, and so on which run
long distances through the building, provide excellent
channels along which sound can travel The result,
in some otherwise admirable modern buildings, is a
nightmare of noise.

Last week I visited the Building Research Station
out at Watford, which is one of the research institutions
under the Department of Scientific and Industrial
Research ; I saw the work that was going on there, and
had a long talk with the Director, Dr. Stradling. His
job, as he explained to me, is first and foremost to see
the problem as a whole. There is a very real need for
economy m construction if we are to have decent
houses at a reasonable price. There is a need for
rapidity in construction, not only for economy's sake,
but also because the country needs a great many new
buildings, and needs them quickly. But the materials
and the design must be such that damp or sound does
not pass through too readily, that the fabric is resistant
to decay and corrosion, that moisture does not condense
inside, that there is decent ventilation, and that the
general layout is convenient.

The excellent building methods of earlier centuries
were the result of good craftsmanship based on tradition,
and the craftsmanship and the tradition were essentially
local, and represented experience m dealing with locally-

SCIENCE AND BUILDING

favoured building material. The effect of modern
conditions has been a mix-up. Ease of transport and
communications not only brings slate to areas where
tiles have been traditional, bricks to regions accustomed
to build in stone, and so on, but also brings the building
craftsman from one area to another where his particular
skill no longer applies. Traditions were once adapted
to materials . now they are all jumbled higgledy-
piggledy.

Stradling illustrated his point from plastering.
There are many sources of lime in Britain. The different
limes come from different natural deposits and possess
different physical and chemical properties — m the rate
of setting, for instance — and hence each requires a
different technique in the handling.

In the old days there were as many traditions of the
plasterer's craft as there are different varieties of lime
in the country. To-day the plasterer, confronted with
some new brand of lime he has not been brought up on,
may make little mistakes which yet may have disas-
trous results — such as the cracking off of all the plaster.
The modern pressure on speed m construction also
introduces a variation on all traditional methods, and
often makes little errors more serious in their results

Stradling was quite definite as to the right line to
pursue For one thing, he believes that good crafts-
manship is still, and will for some time continue to
be, the basis of good building. The time may come,
he agreed, when houses can be mass-produced — the
different ingredients, such as steel frame, walls, glass,
plumbing, and so on, made on a large scale, in different
factories, and then assembled, rather as a car is
assembled, by a specialist firm ; and people will discuss

SCIENCE AND BUILDING 55

the date and brand of their houses as they now do of
their cars But before that is possible, a great deal of
research will have had to be undertaken, let alone
changes in business organization and social outlook.
Meanwhile we must pm our faith to craftsmanship, and
craftsmanship means a good rule-of-thumb ; after that
has been mastered, it is possible to think of beauty.

But — and this is where research comes in — there is
no reason for a rule-of-thumb to be unscientific. The
first need to-day m building research is to find out the
scientific bases for traditional methods The second
is to get really accurate standard specifications for
materials. The two points, of course, link with each
other, for a good tradition can only grow up with a
uniform material to work on.

To go back to our example of plastering, a great deal
of research has recently been going on to find the best
mixtures which will combine ease of working, strength,
rigid setting, and other desirable properties — with a
good deal of success. But this does not dispense with
the need for rule-of-thumb In fact, you want the
rule-of-thumb procedure very carefully laid down, so
that craftsmen accustomed to other traditions shall not
make little mistakes which may upset the whole process.

If you have standard materials, you can work out a
scientific method of treatment for them; and if you
have this scientific basis, you arrive at a rule-of-thumb
which can be reasonable, communicable, and flexible,
instead of rigid, traditional, and obstinate.

So that perhaps the main aims of the Station are to
get materials standardized, so that architects, builders,
and craftsmen shall know what they are dealing with,
and to work out the scientific basis for the treatment

5 6 SCIENCE AND BUILDING

of the materials, on which to build up a new and
intelligent tradition of craftsmanship. This must be
done for quite new materials and processes, like con-
crete and steel construction, just as much as for old
ones, like lime or brickwork.

But a great deal of research is also going on here
in special fields affecting the comfort of the house-user,
such as those w T hich concern warmth and noise. One
bit of work of this type concerns what has been called
sun-planning — siting and designing a house so as to
get the maximum amount of sunshine. This can be
dealt with if a specialist is called in who knows all about
calculating the exact direction of sunshine at different
hours of the day and different seasons of the year in
different latitudes; but a much simpler method has
been devised at Watford by using a scale model of the
building. The model is put on a board which can be
tilted to represent the surface of the earth in the
latitude of the site. The sun is represented by a lamp.
This is made to slide up and down a board to represent
the position of the sun at any time of the year, while
the board is made to rotate to represent the effect of the
earth spinning on its axis every twenty-four hours.
By means of this, the amount of sunshine which will
fall on the outside of a house and get in through the
window at any hour and any day in the year can be at
once made visibly apparent.

Then, in the grounds of the Station is an “ experi-
mental house ” for work on heating. But even though
it was specially designed for the work, the variations in
our English weather made it difficult to carry out the
necessary researches, and now they are going to put up
an experimental house inside another house, or rather

Science in the service of comfort and health. The heliodon at the
Building Research Station, Watford: an instrument for determining
the exact amount of sunshine which a house will receive at any hour
or any day in the year. The sun is represented by the electric-light
bulb on the right. The time of day is marked on the circle on the
table. ( See p. 56.)

By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

SCIENCE AND BUILDING 57

inside another set of walls and roof. Then they will be
able to make artificially whatever weather they like
outside the experimental house by controlling the
temperature and moisture and other atmospheric
conditions in the space between it and the outer shell.
Valuable information is already being obtained as to
the heat-retaining qualities of various types of panel-
lings and so on.

In addition, attempts are being made to reduce
problems of human comfort to scientific terms. Our
human bodies are sensitive not merely to the tem-
perature, but also to humidity, air currents, and other
factors. A rather elaborate apparatus has been devised
to give a definite measure of as many of these factors as
possible ; and with this, measurements are being made
under various conditions of ventilation and heating
system. This particular work is only m its infancy,
and much co-operation will be needed with bodies
like the Medical Research Council ; but it is bound to
throw a great deal of light on all the new problems
arising from the introduction of new types of heating
like gas-fires, and those like central heating and electric
radiation which demand no draught, and therefore
dispense with chimneys and flues — and in general is
certain to make life more comfortable.

The sound problems are just as interesting. The
testing on the practical side is done at Watford, but the
fundamental research is mostly being carried out at
the National Physical Laboratory at Teddmgton, and
also in the laboratories of Metro-Vickers at Manchester
and in other laboratories which I did not have an
opportunity of seeing.

In this field, again, questions of human comfort are

58 SCIENCE AND BUILDING

much to the fore. It is an interesting fact that if we
take a series of sounds increasing in intensity, and if to
our ears and brains the steps in increasing loudness all
seem to be equal, the actual physical energy needed to
make the sound has to be multiplied by the same
amount each time. For sounds of intensity one, two,
three, say, the amount of physical energy will be
one, ten, a hundred. However, this rule is only
approximate * it is slightly different for different kinds
of sounds, and does not hold for very faint and very
loud sounds. Research linking the physical side of
sound production with the physiological side of our
hearing of it is in progress, and will be of the greatest
importance if ever we seriously set about tackling the
business of reducing the unnecessary noise generated
by our so-called civilization.

Immediate results are also being obtained in pre-
venting reverberation and echoes. One room at
Teddington has been deliberately built to give an
abominable reverberation. The intensity of the re-
verberation can be measured ; then a definite area of
some material designed to prevent reverberation is put
on the walls, and the noise again measured. In a very
few years there should be no excuse for reverberating
noises m a building.

Echoes are studied by means of tiny models repre-
senting sections along and across a theatre, or concert-
hall, or whatever the building may be. By an electrical
device, a wave of disturbance in the air is set up at a
spot corresponding to the stage m the model, and can
be actually photographed as it travels to and fro within
the model ; and this shows just how the design can be
corrected for echoes and dead spaces.

SCIENCE AND BUILDING

The worst problems, however, are those of sound
transmission through partitions : here large-scale work
is beginning. It is very laborious, but in a few years
there ought to be really valuable results.

The National Physical Laboratory reminds me that
the construction of buildings is not the only kind of
construction. There are bridges and all sorts of other
engineering structures to be thought of For the
erection of these, of course, all kinds of scientific
research, from pure mathematics down to elaborate
testing of stresses and strains, is absolutely necessary.

One series of researches at the National Physical
Laboratory is dealing with a new process in steel-
working — the making of joints by electric welding
instead of riveting. In electric welding an electric arc
is used, and actually melts the two bits of steel together
But as yet little is known as to the limits of strength
of joints made m this way and the best methods of
using the procedure. Elaborate tests are now being
made, and we shall soon know the safety factor, and
consequently where the new invention can rightly
be used. Similar tests on bolting and nvetting and on
steel-frame joints m general are bemg carried out on
full-scale models in the Civil Engineering Department
of Birmingham University. These, with other tests
at Watford, which are made on a large-scale steel frame
erected as for a building, are part of a big scheme of
research which should lead to an appreciable reduction
in the cost of steel construction.

Then new alloys are being tested out, not only for
steel construction (the new steels are really more
essential for other branches of industry), but also for
plumbing. Some of the new lead alloys on which the

60 SCIENCE AND BUILDING

Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association is working
are likely to do away with many troubles that now beset
the builder or the householder.

Coming back to the Station at Watford, I must try
to bring before you some of the particular bits of
research I saw going on there. One very simple experi-
ment concerns the testing of brick. Brick samples
from all over the country are stuck upright m the soil,
half buried, and left there for a year. The effect on the
spectator is that of a large cemetery on a small scale;
and the effect on some of the bricks is very serious !
If they happen to be under-burnt, or to have certain
kinds of salts m their composition, they crack and split.
There are plenty of other tests on bricks too, the
general aim being to ensure a higher quality and a more
uniform standard.

Then there are researches on the weathering of stone.
Gradually a series of laboratory tests is being worked
out which will enable an accurate prophecy to be made
of a stone's resistance to ordinary weathering and to
corrosion by noxious gases (it will be news to most people
that even in the country noxious gases do the greater
harm : they get blown there from the towns !). These
tests are not only more reliable than the estimates given
even by the most experienced stone-masons and
architects : they are sometimes right when experience
is wrong.

Then there was some fascinating work in progress on
the subject of pile-driving. At the moment, concrete
piles are much in vogue ; but when they meet a hard
layer, sometimes they splinter and mushroom out at
the foot, or break slantwise so that the top half is
forced down alongside the bottom half. To avoid these

SCIENCE AND BUILDING

accidents, which at best cause the loss of the piles, and
at worst may endanger the safety of the construction
they are to support, it is necessary to know just what
forces a pile will stand, and to just what forces it is
actually subjected. Now, quartz, as was found out by
pure physicists m academic laboratories, has the curious
property of altering its electrical resistance under
pressure. So quartz crystals with wires attached are
cast actually m the interior of a concrete pile, and then
the pile is driven with different degrees of force through
material of different hardness An electric current is
sent through the quartz all the time, and its variations
are automatically recorded by the aid of a special
cathode-ray tube. Help m the design of this and the
rest of the electrical part of the apparatus was got by
the Building Research Station from the Radio Research
Station, another of the institutions under the Depart-
ment of Scientific and Industrial Research, a fact which
excellently illustrates the advantages of proper co-
operative organization m research.

Bang comes the pile-driver on the head of the pile;
the quartz is squeezed; the flow of electric current is
altered ; the alteration, translated into terms of light,
is recorded on a photographic film ; and from the amount
of the alteration, the exact pressure inside the pile can
be accurately calculated. In a year or so there will be
no excuse for broken piles.

Then there is the special laboratory, recently finished
for research on concrete — much the best-equipped in
the world. Its atmosphere is maintained under
constant conditions of temperature and humidity — a
necessity for the scientific study of a material like con-
crete, which alters its properties with the temperature,

62 SCIENCE AND BUILDING

and especially with the amount of moisture it contains.
So far the mixing of concrete, even on the largest scale,
has been rather a haphazard business ; in this laboratory
trained chemists are working out the exact changes in
its composition and properties which are brought about
by altering the proportions of its ingredients and the
temperature at which it is melted in the kilns. For
this, miniature furnaces are needed in which the
temperature can be controlled and recorded. By
means of an electrical regulating device (again made
possible by earlier research in pure physics), these
furnaces can be held at temperatures up to nearly
3,ooo 0 F. with a variation of less than a degree ! If
they take advantage of the results of this work, manu-
facturers will soon be able to produce concrete to any
particular specification as required.

A queer little piece of research began with the
accidental noting of the fact that certain types of slate
exposed to high temperatures swell up rather like a
Pharaoh’s serpent. These are mostly of poor quality
as slate, but the new porous material produced from
them by heating can be profitably used for lightening
concrete and other heavy materials.

It is quite clear, I hope you will agree, that research
is doing a great deal for building. It is laying the basis
for a craftsmanship based on scientific knowledge
instead of half-conscious tradition. It is making it
possible to prepare standards for all the multitude of
materials and objects used in building. This might
enable us to reduce the waste of mere variety, and
to raise quality; we might also have many more
standards not only laid down on paper, but actually
enforced through by-laws and regulations. It is

SCIENCE AND BUILDING 63

helping with the introduction and testing of new build-
ing materials, like steel, concrete, synthetic stone, and
the like. It is paying attention to fundamentals of
housing comfort such as heating, ventilation, and
sound-proofing.

But with all this there remain the obstinate facts of
the housing situation. Many of us cheerfully abuse
the Soviet system for the terrible overcrowding still to
be found in Moscow and other big Russian cities ; but
we are prone to forget the overcrowding to be found
in our own country.

I saw it stated the other day that one-fifth of our
population is living m slums — or in poverty verging on
slums : that is, eight million human beings. I need not
remind you of the vast areas scheduled for slum
clearance under the present Ministry of Health campaign.
Sir Hilton Young said that he could foresee, from the
returns already come in, that in five years, two hundred
thousand houses would be cleared and considerably over
one million people re-housed. And many authorities
do not consider this nearly enough.

The trouble about slums and poor housing in general
is primarily economic. Excellent houses can be built
all right ; but to let them to working-class families at an
economic rent is another story. When one begins to
look into the reason for this, a whole tangle of causes
appears — the demand of the ground landlord and the
owner of houses for returns on their property ; taxation
and rates ; unplanned cities with transport difficulties
for their army of working people ; the rate of wages,
and so on. In the main, I think it is fair to say that
there is an acute conflict between two views : the views
of those who regard housing as a social service on a par

64 SCIENCE AND BUILDING

with roads and water-supply and sanitation, and those
who regard it as a commodity to be supplied at a
profit, the profit coming first, and all other considera-
tions being secondary.

To mitigate the abuses arising out of the crude
application of this second view, you may insist on a
certain amount of state or municipal control of con-
ditions. This is the view which the Minister of Health
has just voiced, when he said that to make a profit out
of insanitary slum-dwellings was on a par with selling
diseased meat. The full-blown advocate of the social
service idea, however, believes that proper housing is so
vitally important not only for people's physical health,
but also for their happiness and their general back-
ground of life and thought, that if private enterprise
cannot provide it on terms satisfactory to itself, the
state or the city must step in (as the city authorities
have done m Vienna) and provide it out of general funds,
just as they do roads or sewers or street lighting or
education. Why not, for instance, treat housing as a
public utility on a national scale, and establish a
National Housing Corporation on the same sort of
pattern as the British Broadcasting Corporation ?
I am afraid a lot of you will be thinking that I am stray-
ing beyond my province into that of th^ economist and
the politician. But really I am not. / The more I see
of the way science is or is not being applied to practical
social needs, the clearer it becomes how much the
question is mixed up with economics and politics.

/ However great may be the possible applications of
Scientific research, some form of pressure is needed to
translate possibility into actuality., /Sometimes private
profit provides the driving force, as with most industrial

> ; V '■ ii I V.

, H • ,

" wm mns mi,

with this home for apes — at the London Zoo. {See p. 66.)
By courtesy of Tecton, the architects.

SCIENCE AND BUILDING 65

applications of research ; sometimes military needs, as
with naval construction, poison gas, or new types of
fighting aeroplanes ; sometimes it is a more or less pure
social aim, as with medical research. With building,
private profit combined with a certain amount of
government organization of research is capable of
showing how to build cheaper, better, and more com-
fortable houses ; but can it get them universally built ?
The upholders of private enterprise say “ Yes.” But
there is a strong body of opinion which says “ No,” and
believes that other kinds of driving force are necessary
before the results of research can be fully translated
into practical applications — and with this latter opinion
I am inclined to agree.

During the discussion between Professor Levy and
myself, in the last chapter, a point cropped up about
the absence of state-aided Research Councils m the
fields of economics and social science. Is this where
a partial remedy lies for building ? Of the existing
research on building, an important section is con-
cerned with the comfort of the users — of you and me
and all the rest of the population who have to live and
work in buildings. The rest of it is concerned with
cutting down costs of production — production of the
actual tangible building with its fittings. But the cost
of a building to the man who lives or works in it depends
on a great many other things as w ell — notably on the
cost of the land on which it is built, the costs of develop-
ing the site with roads and light and water-mains, the
rates and taxes, and so on. We want research on such
problems too. At the moment, we have no knowledge
of even the basic facts : for instance, there is no full
national survey of land ownership in existence.

66 SCIENCE AND BUILDING

Then, the convenience of a building depends a great
deal on its surroundings, which means proper planning.
Land ownership, town planning, the system of rating —
all these are factors m the cost and convenience of
building; it may be suggested that fifty years hence
state-aided building research will have concerned itself
with these as well as with problems of building con-
struction and design; and that by then our social
needs in the matter will be properly catered for, in the
erstwhile slums as well as in high-class residential
districts, and there will no longer be the lamentable
contrast between the accommodation provided for the
gorillas at the London Zoo and the human population
of our towns.

CHAPTER V

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

T HE clothing industry, like that of building, is for
the most part traditional. In the building industry
there is one section — that of frame-construction with
steel or reinforced concrete — where there is no link
with traditional methods The same is true of cloth-
ing : the only wholly untraditional section is the
artificial-silk industry. In some cases, old methods
have persisted into the present century. While visiting
the Professor of Leather Chemistry at Leeds University,
I saw hanging on his wall a photograph of a tan-pit at
Falaise m Normandy taken some thirty years ago.
The pit is known to have been a going concern in the
eleventh century (m fact, the father of William the
Conqueror fell m love with the daughter of the tanner
who worked it, and William the Conqueror was the
result , so that tan-pit had a strong influence on
English history). It had been operated unchanged till
the photograph was taken ; and for all I know may still
be going strong

But while the making of fabrics out of vegetable
fibres like cotton or flax, and animal fibres like wool, has
come down to us from antiquity, the modern methods
of achieving these ends have been radically trans-
formed. A Roman building foreman would have
understood most of the work of a building foreman

68 SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

to-day. But a Roman woman, expert with her spin-
ning-wheel, would not be able to recognize spinning
when she saw it going on m a Lancashire mill, any
more than an African weaver would understand what
a modern power-loom was doing. Thanks to new
sources of power (m the shape of water-power, steam,
and electricity) and to mechanical invention (in the
shape of astonishing machines), the tradition of textile
manufacture has been changed much more than has
the tradition of building. None the less, the industry
still operates almost entirely with traditional materials,
and for the most part by means of methods which,
when not traditional m the narrower sense, have been
improved by invention rather than by science. There
have been thousands of years of experience behind the
traditional practices, and enormous financial premiums
on successful inventions, so that it might at first sight
be thought that there would be little room for new
improvements based on the method of science. It
will be my business in this chapter to discuss whether
this is so or not.

In the past there have been, of course, very real
advances in textile processes which have been due to
science. I will take only one example — bleaching.
How many people realize that up till the late eighteenth
century it took a whole summer to bleach a piece of
cloth? The cloth, after being treated with a caustic
substance, was spread out on the grass, so that big
bleaching fields were needed. Then, however, the
chemists discovered chlorine gas and its bleaching
properties, and now, by the aid of compounds contain-
ing chlorine, bleaching can be done in a short time and
in the small space provided by a factory. This is lucky,

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING 69

for otherwise about half the countryside of England
would be covered with pieces of cotton and linen 1 — in
other words, modern output would be altogether
impossible

In the course of my tour I saw a number of places
in which science is being used to study the processes
concerned with our clothing — some of these were
Research Associations under the Department of
Scientific and Industrial Research — one for cotton, one
for wool, one for leather, and one for that rather
different aspect of the problem, laundenng. Others
were University departments — for leather chemistry
and for textile research. Others were private firms,
such as one engaged in improving the machinery for
making boots and shoes, and another doing the same
for knitting machinery. Then other laboratories which
I have visited earlier were incidentally concerned with
other aspects of this problem — for instance, the Animal
Breeding Research Department at Edinburgh with
rabbit-breeding for fur and sheep-breeding for wool, and
the Rowett Institute at Aberdeen with the food of sheep
and the quality of their wool ; and there are plenty of
other laboratories which I had not the time to visit —
concerned with linen, with real silk and artificial silk,
with boot- and shoe-making, with cotton-breeding and
cotton-growing, and with that very important branch
of the industry, dyeing.

The first thing that struck me with all this array of
research is the amount of it that goes to improve
traditional methods and standards by giving them a
scientific foundation. I said something about this in
the previous chapter, and pointed out how important
it was in relation to building. It is, I am sure, equally

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

important for all industries, and especially for those
with a strong traditional basis.

For one thing, it prevents tradition from being dumb
and unintelligent, and provides a method for com-
municating its results; for another it improves the
accuracy of traditional methods, and so helps both to
standardize them and improve them. The skilled
craftsman accustomed to carrying out some process, if
asked how he is sure the conditions are right, will
often tell you he just knows , by experience. He could
not explain his knowledge to another person, nor could
he write down just what was necessary if the con-
ditions were to be reproduced : he simply knows when
they are right. Generally he does know in an almost
uncanny way, considering that he is unprovided with
accurate instruments and methods to give him any
precise measurement — and often in this way he knows
things which we cannot yet measure and describe
accurately.

But whenever it is possible to introduce scientific
methods of measurement, it is found, as a matter of
hard fact, that the standard of accuracy goes up. It
goes up even for the individual craftsman; but it
goes up still more for the industry as a whole, because
then you have measurable standards which can be
written down and be used as a common basis for
correcting the individual prejudices and personal
foibles of different craftsmen.

I should like to give a few examples of this from
different sides of the field of my subject. Take
laundering as a concrete example that comes right
home to everybody. In a modern laundry, your
collars, after washing, are passed round a metal roller,

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

7 *

heated by gas. This ought to be at a particular tem-
perature to give the best results, and the temperature
ought not to vary more than a small amount if you
are to avoid various undesirable effects, such as
collars getting scorched, or going limp afterwards, and
so on. The traditional, and still widely practised
method of telling the temperature, is to spit on the
finger, transfer the spit to the hot roller, and tell from
the particular. sort of crackling it makes if conditions
are right. With an experienced man this gives really
remarkable results , but at the very best, as scientific
research found, you have to expect a variation of not
less than fifty degrees or so either way. Science then
went further, and designed an automatic temperature-
regulator, which can be set to keep the machine at any
desired temperature, with only about five degrees
variation There is no excuse for collars spoilt by
wrong temperatures now.

Just the same sort of thing has been done for the
temperature of the finishing machinery used for wool.
Finish used to be a very tricky quality. But now it is
possible to reproduce a finish over and over again by
means of having accurate control of the conditions.

Then take leather research Here an enormous
amount of work has been done, not only to standardize
the tannin content of various substances used for tan-
ning, but also to standardize the physical and chemical
conditions under which tanning should take place to
give the best results ; by means of chemical indicators
and the like, the tanning expert can now make accurate
tests all the time to see if his vats are providing the
best conditions. In the same way, it has been found
with wool that the conditions under which the wool is

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

7 2

to be “ scoured,” or freed from its natural grease and
from dirt, have got to proceed within certain definite
limits of temperature and of alkalinity if the wool is
not to be damaged ; and science can not only measure
these limits, but can also produce fool-proof gadgets to
test for them in the works.

TemperaTure Dirt- removing power

rtJka/i- Soap Qsho Dirk-suspend/ng power .

[By courtesy of the British Launderers * Research Association.

Science in the laundry industry. A diagram showing quantita-
tively the best conditions for carrying out the washing process.
The temperature and the ratio of alkali to soap must be changed as
indicated in order to get a proper balance between dirt-suspending
and dirt-removing power. The shading indicates the progressive
removal of dirt from the fabrics.

With cotton, too, we find the same steady improve-
ment in technical process as a result of the accuracy
which only scientific research can provide in com-
municable form. Different cottons are now laboriously
standardized in relation to the length of their fibres —

Planned design in the woollen industry. A new type of wool-spinning machine, with a ring spii
frame, designed by the staff of the Wool Industries Research Association at Leeds. ( See p 73.)

By courtesy of the British Research Association for the Woollen and Worsted Industries .

Scientific accuracy in the shoe industry. An instrument for
measuring feet, designed to supply manufacturers with the informa-
tion they need as regards the classification of types of feet and the
specification for properly-fitting shoes for each type.

By courtesy of the British Boot, Shoe, and Allied Trades Research
Association.

Applied physics and the woollen industry, Left, a sunlight lamp
employed to test the fading of dyed patterns. Centre, a matching
lamp, for comparing colours. Right, an ultra-violet lamp, for
detecting certain qualities in fabrics.

By courtesy of the British Research Association for the Woollen and
Worsted Industries.

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING 73

both its average, and the amount of its variation from
the average; on such data, which need a special type
of mathematical treatment before you can employ
them, pronouncements can be made as to the precise uses
the different cottons should be put to, and the details
of their spinning. Or again, cotton fibres could never
stand up to the strain to which they are subjected in
the machines if they were not first strengthened by
being dipped m size ; and there again science is helping
a great deal to standardize and improve the treatment.

I have spent a good deal of time on this point,
because it is very important. This sort of research is
rarely spectacular ; but it is absolutely necessary. It
is the only way in which an industry, especially an
industry of long standing which has grown up in the
pre-scientific era, can improve the efficiency of its
established processes to any large extent and with any
reasonable speed, and the increase of efficiency may
be considerable. At the Wool Research Association I
saw a new carding machine which was the result simply
of a painstaking scientific analysis of all the factors
that enter into the operation of carding wool, followed
by the designing and building of a machine meant to
cope with all the problems m the most efficient way.
The result was a machine which was not only more
efficient and quicker in its working, but also took up
only one half of the space of the old machines ; an even
greater saving of space and increase of efficiency is
being achieved with a specially designed new spinning
machine. Think what this means to a factory owner !

But I must not continue longer on this aspect of
research, for there are plenty of others of interest.
Science, for instance, can be applied in the interest of

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

workers in the industry or of the consumer of its pro-
ducts. Everyone knows how aggravating it is when a
nice new bathing-dress shrinks so that you can hardly
get into it, or splits so that you begin to get out of
it in the wrong place. This trouble has been much ac-
centuated by the spread of sun-bathing, and the research
workers at the Wool Research Association have been
looking into it scientifically. Their findings were quite
definite. It is not merely or mainly the sea- water and the
drying that are to blame. One chief cause is the ultra-
violet rays in sunlight, which damage the intimate struc-
ture of wool much as they do the intimate structure of
the living cells of our bodies. The other is the presence
in sea-water of certain kinds of bacteria — quite harm-
less from the point of view of causing disease — which,
when nicely warmed up by the heat of the sun outside
and of a human body inside, get very active, and
begin to rot the wool The workers at the Research
Association have now got an antiseptic which will dis-
courage the germs; they have a treatment to make
wool much more resistant to ultra-violet; and they
also have a new process (it too based on scientific
research) for preventing shrinkage. Bathers should be
happier next year.

In another room at the same institution a vigorous
anti-clothes-moth campaign is being carried on, with a
good deal of success. Some of the work is being done
in connection with the Forest Products Research
Station, and boxes of cedar and other Empire aromatic
woods are being tested for their qualities in keeping
moths away.

Then there is the comfort of clothes. This depends
largely on the ease with which air can get through

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING 75

the fabric — as everyone knows, the thinnest sheet of
an impermeable stuff is much more uncomfortable
than a thick layer of some cellular material. So xnstru-
ments have been devised to test this property of fabrics
in a quantitative way. Air is blowm through a vertical
tube under standard pressures, first without and then
with a piece of the fabric interposed m the path of the
air-current. In the tube is an ingenious device— a
little metal object with screw vanes, which is supported
by the air-pressure as a celluloid ball can be suspended
m the jet of a fountain The resistance offered by the
fabric is measured by the difference m the height at
which this object is held up in the tube by the air-
current

By such means we can get a fixed rating for the
permeability of a fabric to air; and fixed ratings are
the first step towards improved standards. Similar
work is being done by the Boot and Shoe Trade Research
Association — only here the problem is more com-
plicated, as you want to raise the standard of leather
both for ,St. vf'# ; the passing through of water, and
for c. Y'~, '■'«'? * e that of air

If I had space I could describe a rather amusing
piece of work carried out by the Wool Research
Association which started with a complaint from a
woman who had been cooking, and whose jumper
changed colour only on the front — the side towards the
heat — and led to improved methods of preventing
white flannels from turning yellow. But I must pass
on to an interesting point about the workers. Spinners’
cancer is an all-too-prevalent disease among spinning
operatives. It is probably due to a certain kind of
mineral oil used on the bar of the machine, with

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

which they repeatedly come in contact in their work
Cancer-research workers have found that mixing
lanoline (itself derived from sheep fat) with mineral
oils reduces the chance of these oils giving cancer to
mice, and, of course, the next step will be to try
the method out m the mills The pleasant irony
of the situation is that lanoline is itself a product
of the fat got out of wool m cleaning : the fat has to
be taken out of the w T ool, and the disposal of it is
quite a problem It is interesting to find that alcohol
derived from this same fat is now being used to clean
off the mineral oils used in combing wool — and the
action seems to be more or less the same here as with
that of lanoline m the case of cancer.

Next we come to cases where science has made
possible rather big jumps, instead of helping the
gradual improvement of processes. I spoke earlier of
the big jump in bleaching methods made possible by
the discovery of chlorine gas But chlorine bleaching,
if excessive, will damage the fabric ; so it is important
to have a quantitative test for its effects Now, in
the course of research on cotton, it was found that the
cellulose material of which the cotton fibre is composed
can be dissolved in a chemical substance called cupr-
ammonium sulphate. What is more, it dissolves in a
different way according as to whether it is unaltered
cellulose or cellulose damaged by such processes as
over-bleachmg, so that its fluidity is different in the
two cases. This had provided quite a big improve-
ment for the launderer. By putting into cuprammon-
ium sulphate samples of cotton fabric bleached in
various ways, and then measuring the ease of flow of
the resulting solutions, you can get a direct measure

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

of the damage, if any, done by the bleaching ; and so,
of course, improve and standardize the processes used
for bleaching m laundries. The basic fact here, let
me repeat, was discovered in the course of general
research into the physical and chemical constitution
of cotton fabrics.

Now let me skip to something quite different. Most
people whose memories date back to pre-war days
probably think of a tannery as a nasty smelly place
which they would much rather not have in their
neighbourhood This was largely due to the fact that
in one of the fundamental processes of preparing
leather out of hides — bating or puering, as it is called —
the dung of animals was a necessary and considerable
ingredient. Dog’s dung was the usual material, but
for certain purposes other equally unpleasant sub-
stances like fowl and pigeon dung were favourites.
Then, about twenty years ago, an English chemist.
Wood of Nottingham, got busy. He discovered that
the substance in the dung which was responsible for
the desired effect was trypsin, the well-known ferment
which we and other animals produce to digest the
protein part of our food; and now a preparation of
trypsin made from the sweetbreads of animals is
almost universally used m tanneries in place of dung,
with not only a great increase in cleanliness and
decrease in smelliness, but also a definite improvement
m results, because you can be more accurate when
using a pure substance.

Or take another very different example of a big
change as the result of scientific research — the crease-
resisting cotton (“ creaseless cotton” as it is often
popularly called), put on the market recently by

7 8

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

one of the big cotton firms. The history of this
fabric is interesting. In order to achieve its pro-
duction, the head of the firm engaged the services of
two scientists, a physicist and a chemist He took
in one hand a piece of wool fabric, m the other a
piece of cotton fabric of the same size and weight,
and crumpled both pieces into a ball Then he
opened his hands again; the wool, with its natural
elasticity, uncreased itself, but the cotton stayed
crumpled. “ I want you,” he said, “ to make cotton
fabric which will behave like the wool ; take ten years
if you like ” They tried everything, from india-rubber
to gum and back again ; and tried them scientifically,
not just hit-or-miss. Eventually they got a synthetic
substance whose molecules would slip nicely into the
cotton fibres and give them elasticity. But instead of
ten years it was fourteen before the new fabric was on
the market. This well shows not only what slow
slogging research, backed by scientific methods, can
do, but also what a long and difficult job it can
be.

And of course there is rayon itself — artificial silk. I
have not space to say much about this active new
industry, except that it is very much the child of
science. When people first had the idea of making
artificial fibres by dissolving cellulose and squirting it
through holes under pressure, the process itself de-
pended on facts and methods discovered m laboratories
of pure chemistry. Then, the product in those early
years was far from satisfactory — it curled and crinkled,
it dyed patchily, it shrank, it went to pieces under very
slight provocation. Constant scientific research on all
the processes involved has turned it into the really

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING 79

lovely material available to-day — a new gift of science
to the world.

Before going further, I would like to give one more
example, to show how research is being focussed on our
problem from very different angles. One of the
research workers in the Animal Breeding Research
Department at Edinburgh is engaged in applying
Mendel's principles of heredity to practical rabbit-
breeding. He showed me a whole series of the latest
types of rabbit pelts for use m the fur trade. There
was one which, until you actually handled it, was an
excellent imitation of silver fox— the same dark hair
with white ticking. He had made this himself, by
introducing the hereditary factor for dark colour from
one breed, and the factor which causes the white
ticking from another breed of quite a different colour.
Then there were really wonderful imitations of sable.
These he had not created himself ; but he had cleared
up a puzzle of why they never bred true, and shown
breeders how to produce 100 per cent, sables by breed-
ing two quite different-looking pure breeds together.
This was again an application of simple Mendelian
principles. Imitations of silver fox and grey squirrel,
of marten, of plush, of caracul— all these he showed
me too. Furs are only a small branch of clothing;
but they are important for their social implications :
cheap furs, like artificial silk, make it possible for
women with small incomes to feel smart and fashionable.

So I could go on, only that I have not space. I
must, however, just mention one line of research that
is giving the most fundamental and revolutionary
results — and that is the application of X-ray photo-
graphy to textile fibres. X-ray photography is a

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

method for revealing to us the invisible fine structure
of substances — the way their actual atoms and mole-
cules are arranged. It is a rather new branch of
science, that owes more to Sir William Bragg, who
wrote the introductory chapter of this book, than to
any other man. The story of its applications, in pure
physics, in the steel industry, in the wool trade, in
general biology, is so fascinating that I shall try to
tell it more in detail in a later chapter, when I come back
to the interaction between pure and applied science.
Here I will only say that it is allowing us with the
eyes of the mind to see right inside the wool fibre and
understand its intimate structure, and that this is
helping the wool-chemists to a new understandmg of
their work, and opening up the way for all kinds of
new tricks for the practical man to play on wool
fibres. To take but two examples : in all probability
this new knowledge will soon help to a final solution
of the old problem of making unshrinkable woollens;
and, since human hair differs only m detail from
sheep's wool, it has already thrown light on some of
the troublesome problems of permanent waving which
afflict ladies' hairdressers.

But now I want to get on to a more general sub-
ject — about the relation of science not merely to
textile processes, but to the textile industries them-
selves, looked at as part of the social and economic
structure of the country. And here we find ourselves
in what is really a very queer world of actions and
interactions.

In the first place, science itself is changing the raw
materials available for clothing. It has produced
altogether new materials, like rayon. It has helped,

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING 81

by means of breeding and selection and agricultural
research, to produce more of the old materials, and in
better qualities. The production of cotton has been
pushed up until there is a glut, even of the best kinds, on
the world's markets. In the chapter on food, I pointed
out how the sheep-carrying capacity of this country
could easily be doubled; and this concerns wool just
as much as it does mutton. Recently, large-scale work
on the improvement of flax has been begun, in Russia,
this country, and elsewhere. There is no reason to
doubt that the silk-producmg capacity of silk-worms
could be doubled by similar breeding work.

Now, all these different lines of work exert violent
effects, actual or potential, on the various textile
industries. The work on flax is bringing about a
renaissance of linen, and so depressing the chances of
cotton. Then, with all respect to the admirable
qualities of modern artificial silk, most people would
prefer real silk — if they could get it cheap; so any
improvement m the genetic qualities of silkworms will
improve the position of silk as against rayon in the
struggle for markets Rayon itself has so far effected
the most revolutionary change : not only has it pro-
vided a new cheap material which is a direct rival to
other textiles (a process has been worked out for using
whole cotton plants as the raw material for rayon
products ! ), but it has also had a profound social
influence. It has made it possible for girls with small
incomes to make a brave bid for equal smartness with
their more fortunate sisters m wealthier sections of
society, which was impossible fifty years ago, and so
has helped a great deal in the breaking down of class
distinctions.

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING

New machinery may also help in changing fashions.
At Leicester, I saw a machine designed to make
possible a new kind of stitch in the knitting of under-
wear. While the needles flick in and out at terrific
speed, some of them are made to move sideways and
transfer the thread to their neighbours ! The fabric
made m this way has not yet been put on the market ;
but when this happens, it will doubtless set a new
fashion in underwear, as has already been done in the
past by the introduction of other new types of stitch.
So here we may say that the machine-designer sets the
pace for fashion and comfort, and by so doing may
give an advantage to one material over another.

While on the subject of fashion, let us also remember
that it is now the fashion to wear much less clothing
than our ancestors did But this is not merely
fashion — it is also based on medical and physiological
research, which tells us that it is healthier to wear
light clothing, and so stimulate our skm to work at
keeping us warm, than to muffle ourselves m layers of
material and make no demands upon our skin. And
naturally this reduction in the amount of clothing worn
makes the struggle between the various textile industries
more acute. Then there is the modern attitude of
mind, which prefers quick changes of fashion to wear-
ing qualities in dress. This, too, makes for violent
fluctuation and more acute competition as between
different fabrics and raw materials.

One important result of this competition is that
much research is going on to find new uses for the
different raw materials of clothing. With cotton, for
instance, an enormous amount is used for incorporating
with rubber to give wearing properties to motor tyres ;

SCIENCE AND CLOTHING 83

for this, specially strong fabric is needed. Then again,
new types of fabric are demanded for aeroplane wings.
Another new use for cotton is for insulating the parts
of electrical machinery Here there is a growing
demand. And doubtless the “ creaseless ” cotton I
mentioned before will find all kinds of new fields to
invade

Wool, too, claims a share m the manufacture of
insulating material ; and, if certain difficulties are got
over, may be a dangerous rival to cotton m this field.
Then there is rayon, which is finding an outlet in the
manufacture of the wrapping material cellophane as
well as m clothing — and so on. So, in a way, while
science is making it possible for each of the separate
industries involved m clothing to become more efficient,
and to carry on m competition with its rivals, it is
also aggravating that competition, and causing rapid
and violent fluctuations in. the industry as a wffiole.

Once more, in fact, w r e are brought up against
economic and social problems — in this case against the
problem of planning. Without the large-scale planning
of industry, science is liable to cause as many diffi-
culties as it relieves / That is not a reason to cut
down the role of science, but rather to enlarge it It
means that w T e w T ant scientific methods applied not only
in the fields of technolog} 7 and production, but also in
those which affect the organization of particular
industries, and indeed the economic life of the nation
as a whole.

CHAPTER VI

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

P EOPLE are very prone to take things for granted
m matters of health, both in regard to the treat-
ment of disease and the day-to-day business of keeping
well ; and so you sometimes find a tendency to grumble
at what science has not done in this supremely important
field, instead of being thankful for what it has done.

And what it has done already is something pretty
revolutionary. Let me remind you of some of its
achievements. Before the nineteenth century there
were no anaesthetics. People were often made drunk
before an operation, and even then generally had to
be held down while the sawing and cutting were going
on. The pain and shock were so great that patients
sometimes died of it.

With the progress of chemistry, chloroform was
discovered, and other anesthetics such as ether,
laughing gas, and so on Their general introduction
into surgical practice was undoubtedly one of the
biggest steps ever taken to alleviate human suffering.

Later on came the local anesthetics like cocaine
and its relatives, which have done so much to rob a
visit to the dentist of its terrors, and at the moment
research is busy with a whole new batch of anesthetic
substances, which seem destined to rid anesthesia
of some of its present minor discomforts and dis-

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 85

advantages, and make major operations a less serious
business.

But anaesthetics are no good if operations are
dangerous for other reasons; and people often forget
how intensely dangerous they were, right up to the
middle of last century. With the huge increase in
population, and the consequent growth of big towns
and big hospitals, new possibilities were opened to those
enemies of the human race — germs. And, as a result,
infection and suppuration spread through hospitals like
wild-fire. The slightest wound or even scratch often
proved fatal, and the death-rate was appalling.
Descriptions of the hospitals of those times are heart-
rending, and almost incredible to-day

The reason for the terrible state of affairs was merely
ignorance. Nobody knew what the enemy was. Germs
had not been discovered It remained for the great
French scientist Pasteur to prove their existence and
to show that there was no such thing as their spontaneous
generation, and then for the great English scientist
and doctor Lister to apply Pasteur's ideas in medicine.

As a result of this new knowledge and the technique
which has grown out of it, there is to-day less danger
of infection as the result of an operation than there is
from the little accidents of normal existence, and lives
are being saved every day by wonderful operations
which could not even have been dreamt of before the
days of Pasteur and Lister.

Treatment, too, has been completely revolutionized.
Gone are the days of bleeding as the universal remedy
for all ills ; gone, too, those when “ a bottle of medicine ”
was all that medical science had to offer to a patient.
Treatment with ultra-violet and other kinds of light.

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

special injections for all kinds of conditions, scientific
dieting, remedial exercises based on scientific know-
ledge, prescriptions of ductless gland extracts and
vitamins — these are some of the modern methods of
treatment that simply were not available half a
century ago.

Let me give one example of the advances m treatment
which science has made possible. I went round some
of the wards of the London Hospital, that gigantic
institution with nearly a thousand beds, in company
with the director of its research unit — or Medical
Unit, as it is officially called. One of the wards I
visited was for patients on special diets, which included,
of course, sufferers from diabetes. One of these was a
child of eight. He had come in on the Friday with
hardly any flesh on his bones, and in a state verging
on coma — the normal state of diabetics when the
disease reaches a certain stage of seriousness By
Monday he was cheerful and active in his mind, and
had put on nine pounds — nine pounds in three
days !

This sort of spectacular result is being achieved all
the time with diabetics. The possibility of its achieve-
ment is due entirely to the patient researches of
physiological science, which showed that diabetes was
due to a disorder of the pancreas, and culminated in
the discovery of insulin, the active chemical substance
produced by the gland, which can be made from the
pancreas of animals and used to remedy the patients'
own deficiencies.

This brings me to the further question — what
research is doing now to help us towards better health,
and I might as well go on with the London Hospital

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 87

and its research unit. These research units are now a
feature of many big hospitals The men working in
them take their share of looking after the patients in
the wards, but otherwise devote their time to laboratory
research instead of teaching or private practice. The
aim, of course, is to have as much scientific research
as possible going on m close relation with the day-to-day
needs of practical medicine There is generally also a
clinical laboratory attached to a hospital, in which
are made all the laborious routine tests and anafyses
(themselves made possible by past achievements of
science) which are needed for proper diagnosis and
treatment — chemical and biological analysis of blood
and urine, tests for the presence of bacteria, and so
on. Here, also, research is generally going on, and
when a full-time regular research unit exists also, a
fruitful liaison can be achieved

At the London, for instance, as well as fundamental
work on kidney trouble, diabetes, anaemia, and other
chronic diseases, research is m progress on new methods
of estimating the amount of haemoglobin m blood.
Haemoglobin is, of course, the stuff which not only
gives blood its red colour, but confers on it its unique
oxygen-carrying capacity ; so it is very important
to have an accurate measure ot it This new apparatus,
which works with the aid of a photo-electric cell, is
more accurate and dependable than any of the old
methods, some of which, it now appears, gave results
that were often quite seriously out. The new apparatus
vail be a real help m many kinds of disease.

Parrot-disease, or psittacosis (which is merely the
Greek for the same thing), is serious, and often fatal
(you probably remember the scare about it not so long

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

ago), but luckily rare. However, it is interesting as
being one of the diseases caused by what are known
as filterable viruses, about which I shall have something
to say later. Owing to there being research workers
on the spot when a case of parrot disease came into the
wards, research was started on the subject, and, as I
was privileged to see with my own eyes down a micro-
scope, has led to quite new discoveries concerning
the cycle of growth and development which the virus
goes through in the living body.

But I must not spend too long m one place I want
to speak also of the work that is going on in laboratories
of pure science, remote from hospitals and patients,
and yet with a bearing on our health.

I will give you one excellent example of the way in
which pure research, which at first sight seems altogether
useless and impractical, may link up with extremely
practical results. When I have occasion to go to
Cambridge, I generally try to pay a visit to the Strange-
ways Research Laboratory to see what new results
my various friends there are getting. The Laboratory
in its present enlarged state is a memorial to Dr.
Strangeways, who for some years carried out there
his pioneer work on tissue-culture — that is to say,
the cultivation of fragments of living tissue outside
the body.

As most people know, the technique of this method
has now reached a high pitch, and has enabled us to
prove a number of interesting general facts, such
as the immortality of tissue cells. The tissues of a
fowl, for instance, die because of something concerned
with their organization into a body : when cultured
outside the body, they can go on growing apparently

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 89

indefinitely, and certainly for much longer than they
would have if left m the hen.

At the Strangeways there has been developed a
rather new line — of cultivating the early rudiments of
single organs taken out of embryo chicks and seeing what
will happen to them. They have, it is found, an
extraordinary power of carrying on with their develop-
ment on their own For instance, the fragment of
tissue m the centre of the thigh-region of a very young
chick embryo will not only turn mto cartilage and then
into bone just as it would have if left in its natural
place, but will turn quite definitely into a thigh-
bone.

This suggested studying the machinery of bone-
formation, by altering the chemical composition of the
fluid in which such fragments w^ere kept. This w r as
done m conjunction with a research worker at the
Lister Institute in Chelsea And, to cut a long story
short, the experiments have helped us to undeistand
the means by winch lime and phosphorus are built
up into normal bone; and this, m turn, is throwing
light on the widespread disease rickets (from some
degree of which over half the infants of this country
are in all probability at this moment suffering), and
on the whole question of how to promote full health
and growdh by means of extra vitamins

Then let me give an example of research which is
still largely in the phase of pure science — the work
which is going on all over the world in laboratories of
physiology, chemistry, zoology, and in clinical wards
too, on that extraordinary organ, the pituitary gland.
We cannot yet see just where all this w T ork is going to
help in relation to human health ; but for any one with

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

1 mm.

Fundamental biological research.
The thigh-bones of 5^-day embryo
chicks were dissected out, placed
in a drop of sterilized nutritive fluid,
and allowed to grow, i, immedi-
ately after removal; 2-6, after 3,

o, i 5 , 21, and 27 days’ growth m
artificial culture. The bones de-
velop just as they would have it
left in the body of the chick. [See

p. 89.)

{After Fell and Robinson. By
courtesy of the Biochemical Journal .

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 91

any imagination at ail the possibilities opened up by
it are almost awe-inspirmg.

The human pituitary is quite a small organ — about
the size of a hazel-nut — attached to the base of the
brain It is found in all backboned animals, and
develops m a very queer way out of two parts, one an
ingrowth from the roof of the mouth, the other a
downgrowth from the floor of the brain

Most ductless glands seem to have one or two
functions only ; but as research continues, the pituitary
is being revealed as a kind of master-gland, with a
quite extraordinary number of activities to its credit.
With the aid of one or other of the various chemical
substances which it secretes, it looks after growth;
it helps the muscles of the womb to contract m child-
birth ; it regulates the amount of water in the body ;
it stimulates the thyroid gland to full growth and
normal activitv , it is a sort of opposite number to the
pancreas m regulating the storage and utilization of
foodstuffs, it is iesponsible for the rate at which the
sex-organs come to maturity, and it controls the growth
and liberation of eggs from the ovary in accordance
with a regular cycle. It is also responsible m some way
for the maintenance of the sex instincts, and, it seems,
for the onset of old age and senility.

If we include other kinds of animals than man and
his fellow-mammals, we find it controlhng the secretion
of “pigeon’s milk ” by doves and pigeons, responsible
for change of colour m frogs and newts , helping in the
transformation of tadpoles into frogs; and bringing
on the hibernation of creatures which go into a winter
sleep !

Three hundred years ago, Descartes, that great

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

French intellect, assigned to the pineal gland on the
top of the brain the honour of being the seat of the
human soul. He would have been much nearer the
mark if he had suggested the pituitary gland below
the brain ! It is, of course, obvious from modem
biological fact that there can be no particular organ
which is “ the seat of the soul/' but the pituitary
probably has more to do with human temperament and
personality than any other single organ.

Perhaps some of my readers will be asking what all
this has to do with health ? But the answer, I think, is
pretty obvious. Let me take a parallel case from
another gland, where history has provided the answer.
About half a century ago, Minkowski, m the course of
some researches on the way fats were used in the body,
tried the effect of cutting out an animal's pancreas.
To his surprise, the animal developed the symptoms
of that well-known and terrible human disease diabetes,
which I mentioned earlier in this chapter. Fired by this
observation, many workers began studying the relation
between the pancreas and diabetes. It took about a
third of a century before those studies bore fruit — in
the discovery and preparation of insulin, the internal
secretion of the normal pancreas. As a result, the
diabetic patient to-day can live an almost normal
life, instead of being condemned to complete invalidism
and probable death.

This research concerned a single substance. The
pituitary produces a dozen or more substances of at
least equal importance to the workings of our bodily
and mental machinery. Research is now more active
than fifty years ago : in perhaps a quarter of a century
this work will be bearing its fruits. We cannot be sure

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

exactly what they will be , but they are bound to be
important. A more active old age, and perhaps an
extension of the average span of life , better treatment
for diabetes and other diseases concerned w ith the way
our bodies utilize food; wholly new and improved
methods of birth-control, some real control over the
mysterious phenomena of growth — these are just a
few of the ways m which we can be pretty sure these
researches on a single gland are going to link up with
the health of our children and grandchildren

Then I suppose my readers will expect me to say
something about cancer — and quite rightly, too, since
cancer is m many ways the most sinister disease.

Sir James Jeans not very long ago wrote a book
The Mysterious Universe. Among the various mys-
teries which he did not touch upon was this horrible
mystery of cancer — the cells of our own bodies rebelling
against us, torturing us, and killing us. The theo-
logical conclusion of his book was that God, whatever
else he might be, must be a mathematician. If lie had
carefully considered the mystery of cancer, he might
have been driven to the theological conclusion that
God found an interest m meaningless cruelty. But
this is not the place for theological speculation. Let
me come back to the hard facts of cancer. The work
in cancer research has not yet discovered the funda-
mental cause of cancer, or given us a universal cure.
None the less, it has led to real advances. To
take only the last quarter of a century, we have in
that time seen the experimental production of cancer
by means of various substances, of which tar is the
best investigated. This has led on to further studies,
which have shown that only certain of the substances

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

derived from tar will produce cancer, and that these are
all of the same general chemical structure. Extremely
detailed chemical work is now in progress which may
have a good deal to tell us in the near future.

Then a quite different line of advance is due to the
German scientist Warburg, who showed that cancer
cells have a different chemical behaviour from ordinary
cells in respect of that most fundamental process of
life, breathing. In getting the energy for their vital
processes, they are much more independent of oxygen
than are normal cells. This explains a number of the
characteristics of cancer cells, such as their ability to
grow and penetrate into other tissues; and perhaps
eventually this fact will be linked up with the facts of
cancer-production by tar, and we shall find that this
change is what we should expect when the cancer-
producmg substances from tar are thrown into the
crucible of the living body.

Finally, there is the discovery, first made in America,
of the fact that certain malignant tumours of fowls
could be propagated m other fowls, not merely by
grafting a bit of them, but also by means of the clear
fluid, entirely free of cells, which comes through when
a chopped-up mass of tumour is passed through a
filter fine enough to stop the passage of all visible
particles. This has led to the belief that m these tum-
ours at least, and perhaps in all, some sort of active
living agent, like a virus, is the true cause of the diseased
condition. There remain many difficulties in this view ;
. but at any rate we have a fundamental new fact —
namely, that in some cancerous growths something or
; other is produced which is invisibly small, and yet is
able to start the same kind of growth again in another

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 95

animal. And quite recently two of the new lines of
work have been linked up by the discovery that malig-
nant growths can be experimentally produced in fowls
by tar, and that in some cases at least these contain
the active cancer-producing agent which can be filtered
off. So at the moment, you see, the cancer problem is
rather like the situation half-way through a detective
story — a number of exciting and obviously important
clues have come to light . they are being eagerly followed
up, both by the official detectives, so to speak, working
in cancer research laboratories, and by the unofficial
sleuths in biological and chemical laboratories : and we
feel that the climax of the plot cannot be long delayed,
even if we are still unable to spot the murderer.

Meanwhile, let us not forget that on the purely
curative side, thanks to radium, improved diagnosis,
better surgical technique, and so on, the percentage of
cases which can be cured has gone up quite consider-
ably. There is one proviso — that they should ask
medical advice as early as possible. Half the tragedies
of cancer occur because sufferers put off consulting a
doctor until too late.

The filterable tumours of birds link up with another
very fascinating line of research which of late years has
been getting more and more important — research on
viruses and virus disease. I have already mentioned
Pasteur's discovery of bacteria or “germs" Every
one knows now that many diseases owe their origin
to different kinds of these visible living creatures
which invade the body and live upon and poison the
tissues. Tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and diphtheria
are three well-known diseases caused by bacteria.

This was of course one of the greatest steps ever

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

made in medicine — and indeed in general biology;
but for a time people were inclined to think it an even
greater step than it was, and to believe that all infectious
diseases were caused by bacteria. Gradually, however,
the list of diseases in which the most diligent search
failed to reveal any such visible cause became quite a
long one. It includes such dangerous diseases as
yellow fever, sleepy sickness, smallpox, and influenza,
such everyday complaints as measles, mumps, and our
friend the common cold. In animals, there are foot-
and-mouth disease of cattle, and distemper of dogs.
In plants, many very destructive diseases, such as wilt
disease of tobacco and mosaic disease of potatoes and
other plants, fall into the same category.

Modern research has shown that these, too, are
caused by specific agents, which seem to be alive like
bacteria, but differ from them in not being capable of
being cultivated apart from the living tissues which they
attack, and in being so small (all except one or two) as
to be beyond the range of the most powerful micro-
scope.

They have been isolated by the same methods of
filtration I spoke of apropos of the filterable fowl
tumours; and from the size of the pores of the filters
we can tell the size of the disease-producing particles.
Besides this, of late years some of them have been
rendered visible by photographing them with ultra-
violet light. Their size, as determined by these methods,
ranges between 5 and 250 /x/x — and a fi/x (pronounced
mew-mew) is a unit measuring about 1/25-millionth part
of an inch. Bacteria, on the other hand, begin at about
250 (jLfx and range up to ten and twenty times as big.

These disease-producers are generally called viruses ;

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 97

and of late years, thanks to new methods, we are at
last getting to grips with these invisible enemies, as
during last century we got to grips with visible disease
germs.

This, by the way, is a good place to bring up the
vexed question of experiments on animals.

Of course, I know, and my readers know, that there
are those who argue — and argue sincerely — that experi-
ments on animals should be prohibited — that they are
cruel and unnecessary. For the scientist, however, it is
hardly a vexed question, for if such experiments were
prohibited, he would simply have to shut up shop in
the branches of science which bear on human health .
without experiment there can be no real advance, and
animal experiment is often the only method of experi-
ment available. This is pre-eminently the case with
virus diseases. When a disease is caused by something
which is too small to see, and which you cannot grow
in broth or on jelly or any artificial medium, the only
way you can get hold of it for controlled study is to pass
it from one animal's body to another.

By such means the immunity conferred by one attack
of disease has been studied, with extremely encouraging
results. For instance, a completely successful method
of treating distemper m dogs has been worked out in
this country; and similar research has been going on
with that terrible human disease, yellow fever, and now
we are on the verge of being able to inoculate against it
beforehand. The work on yellow fever would have
been impossible but for experiments on mice and mon-
keys; and that on distemper — a gift of health to the
dog world — -without experiments on dogs and ferrets.

Animal experiment is also absolutely necessary in

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

another branch of medical science — standardization;
but I shall have to leave this subject until I deal with
the international aspects of science. Here I will only
say that without standardization we would not dare to
use such wonderful treatments as antitoxin for diph-
theria, insulin for diabetes, or salvarsan for syphilis,
since you must have just the right dose — too little is
useless, too much is dangerous. And standardization,
in the present state of our knowledge, can only be
achieved by the use of experimental animals. I wonder
how many anti-vivisectiomsts would refuse such treat-
ments for themselves or their children ?

I could go on with examples of what research is doing
and might do, but I must devote what space is left to
another aspect of the question. With all the improve-
ment in the past and all the gifts of science in the pre-
sent, it remains an obvious and lamentable fact that
the standard of health is very much below what it
might be. For one thing, acute disease of many kinds
is still rampant. Our descendants will doubtless
look back on our civilization, with its widespread tuber-
culosis and syphilis, its high cancer death-rate, its
epidemics of influenza, with the same kind of tolerant
pity that we think of that of our ancestors, burdened
with typhus, plague, malaria, and smallpox. Then,
for another thing, the glowing, radiant state of really
full health is all too rare : probably not one among a
thousand of our city populations has it.

To what is due this gap between the possible and
the actual ? It is due, for one thing, to the complexity
of the human body and its workings, and the consequent
wide extent of our ignorance. Few but professional
biologists realize the almost appalling degree of this

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

complexity. But when all allowance has been made
for this, there is a glaring difference between what we
could do with our existing knowledge and the state of
affairs which actually exists

Preventable causes, such as overcrowding, insanitary
houses, and lack of facilities for open-air recreation,
account for a great deal of our tuberculosis. If we were
to treat the venereal disease problem primarily as
one of hygiene, as we do with scarlet fever or
diphtheria, and not bring morals into the question of
treating and especially of preventing it, we could reduce
the amount of it to a fraction of its present figure. But
perhaps the most striking example is m the field of diet
The research of the last dozen \ ears has really solved
the mam scientific problems of diet, so that we now
know the essential facts about all the more important
of what are called the accessory food factors — the
vitamins and the mineral salts — which are necessary
for health, proper growth, and resistance to disease,
over and above the food needed for the general require-
ments of the body m respect of fuel and wear-and-tear.

And we know that a large section of the population
is suffering from at least a slight deficiency m one or
other of these food-factors, and therefore falls short (in
energy, physique, and freedom from sickness) of its
birth-right of possible health We know this from
physical measurements, such as the lower average
stature and weight of children from poor neighbour-
hoods. We know it from the astonishing prevalence
of mild disease, such as slight degrees of rickets. We
know it from scientific analysis and experiment, as when
a sample of the diets of poor families is taken and
analysed and found to be at or below the danger-hue

100

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

for certain substances — and, when given to animals
such as rats, leads to widespread chronic disease and
heavy mortality.

It is safe to say that a benevolent dictator could
double the level of general health merely by means of
applying what is now known about diet. The reason
for the present state of things is partly public ignorance,
but is largely sheer poverty. On the whole, the right
kind of foodstuffs cost more , and it is all but impossible
for many people to eat healthily on the wages or the
unemployment allowance which they receive : both m
quantity and still more in quality, their food, in present
conditions, is bound to be near the danger-lme. On the
other hand, it would be possible, at no great expense,
to supplement inadequate diet by adding the vitamins
and mineral salts that are likely to be deficient ; they
might, for instance, be put in bread. This is where the
benevolent dictator would come in. At present it
seems to be nobody’s business to take the necessary
steps . 1 * * * * *

Under our present system we have to rely on other
means to get things done — public health administration,
school medical service, and the slow education of the
public and those w 7 ho supply its needs I have not
space to deal with all the questions that spring up
directly one begins to think of public health admmis-

1 Since this chapter was written, a step m this direction has

been taken, by the proposal to provide milk, perhaps the most
important single source of accessory food-factors, for school-

children at well below market rates It may be that the next
fifty years will see the provision of an adequate diet and

adequate housing regarded as basic social services, to be

provided out of community funds, just as happened, m spite

of great opposition, with elementary education, the police

service, and. water-supply during the nineteenth century.

SCIENCE AND HEALTH

IOI

tration Should the State maintain the hospitals, as is
done in most other countries ? Should a health policy
aim at a State medical service, with reduction or
abolition of private practice, as is roughly the state of
aftairs m Russia 1

These are difficult questions, but well worth thinking
about. We should bear m mind the existence of the
school medical service. The recognition that a State-
controlled system of education could not concern itself
only with the mind, but, if it was to get good results,
had to deal with the body too, was a great step forward
in our national health policy

But, meanwhile, the education of the public at large
remains as a necessity if we are to continue raising the
level of health m the country This is linked up with
a number of other knotty problems. For instance,
should the advertising of patent medicines be forbidden,
or regulated m some way ? Should the complete form-
ula of every such medicine, with a statement by some
public health authority as to the known effects of the
various ingredients, be printed on every bottle or box ?
There are many pros and cons : again, it is well w r orth
discussion.

What we need most of all, perhaps, is some policy and
organization for positive health, not merely an organiza-
tion and a policy centring round disease. One of the most
interesting experiments in this direction is the Pioneer
Health Centre at Peckham, with the directors of which
I have had several talks in the last few years. This,
if you want to sum it up in a phrase, is a Health Club.
Families belong at so much a week. Every member
of the family gets an overhaul every so often — the
more often the younger they are. It is a really

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SCIENCE AND HEALTH

thorough overhaul, using all the resources of modern
physiology, for the directors (who are, of course,
themselves qualified doctors) have found that by these
means you can not only detect but correct slight tenden-
cies to bad health (such as rheumatic tendencies in
children) which could not have been got rid of, m the
great majority of cases, if they had gone on to the stage
when they would have been detected by an ordinary
routine medical examination.

People with any medical symptoms of disease are
referred to their regular medical advisers, who pre-
scribe for them in the ordinary way. But the speciality
of the place is the way it deals with the side of life that
is not usually considered to have a relation to medicine
at all. The directors, after finding out all they can
about the temperament, inclinations, and home life
of their members, prescribe what they call “ activities ”
for them. The activity may be something physical
like swimming or boxing ; it may be intellectual, like
study (special rooms are provided for those who cannot
get the chance of quiet study at home, and someone is
on hand to answer questions and give guidance as to
reading) ; it may be membership of the dramatic club
or the discussion group. The point is that the activity
is medically prescribed, just as a bottle of medicine is
prescribed, and that the member of the health club
(I do not like to call him the patient) pays so much a
week for the activity concerned, just as he would pay
for the medicine. Great attention is also paid to the
psychological side, especially to the personal relations
of members with the rest of their family ; and as every-
thing is done on a friendly basis, as part of the
obligations of membership, the work does not come up

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 103

against the opposition which might greet it if carried
out in a routine official way

By such means, much progress has been made in
raising the health of the members. As one of the
directors said to me, everyone interested m health
aims at conferring on the body a full stature, a good
carnage, and a right gait “We feel/' he said, “that
the same should apply to the mind We aim at opening
up the possibility of full stature to the growing mmd,
of conferring on it a healthy carriage, instead of the
limp slouch or the cramping tension which too often
characterizes it, and of allowing it to find its own
right gait and speed, instead of forcing it or holding it
back. This is not only good for the mmd, but, as body
and mind are merely aspects of the single organism, it
is good for the body too "

It is true that if we could see minds as we see bodies,
we should be horror-struck at the stunted dwarfs, the
cripples, the gnarled, distorted mental creatures that
would be revealed to us on every side ; and this scheme
of the Pioneer Health Centre is a most valuable and
interesting one It is not yet four years old. The
directors plan to continue for a few more years, to see
whether they reallv are on the right lines and if the
scheme can be maintained on a self-supporting basis ,
and then, the}” hope, something will be done to start
similar centres elsewhere.

But I must bring this chapter to an end I hope I have
made certain things clear— notably that without science
in the past, the great historical advances of medicine
could never have been made ; that without science m
the present, the medical and health system of the
country would just collapse; and that without science

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SCIENCE AND HEALTH

in the future, there will remain great tracts of ignorance
about the human body and its disorders and treatments,
where medicine can only grope instead of acting with
certainty and knowledge.

I hope I have also made clear that, however great
our scientific knowledge, there are all kinds of obstacles
and barriers to its being properly applied — poverty,
vested interests (in the purveying of food and housing,
for instance), religious prejudices (such as those which
try to prevent the spread of reasonable birth-control
knowledge), public ignorance and apathy, lack of social
and economic planning, and so on , and that to get it
across, you need a very definite positive health policy,
and great energy and determination in carrying it out.

CHAPTER VII

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

I FOUND it extremel\ T difficult to work out an} 7
coherent plan for this chapter, on science and com-
munications Communications cover such a multitude
of different things — from aeroplanes to Zeppelins, from
roads and railways to telephones and telepathy, from
languages and letters to cables and canals, from
different sources of power for propulsion like coal, oil,
and electricity, to different means of disseminating
information like books, wireless, and the cinema And
not only that, but science has been busy m so many
ways, laying the foundations for so many applications,
that the effects on human life are bewildering both in
their magnitude, their number, and their rate.

So I thought that m this case I would leave out most
of the technical scientific side of things, and confine
myself more to the applications, rambling over the field
to show the different ways, sometimes expected, some-
times odd and very unexpected, in which one advance
may act, react, or interact on others.

The first and most elementary fact about com-
munications is that they changed hardl} T at all for about
two thousand years, and then were suddenly plunged
into a period of revolutionary change, which is still in
full blast, by the application of human inventiveness

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io6 SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

and, in an ever-increasing proportion as time went on,
of science

Until the end of the eighteenth century, the roads of
England were no better than in Roman times. One
of the Georges, travelling from Windsor to London, got
stuck and had to leave his royal coach m the mud.
Within living memory, pack-animals were still used in
some parts of England as the main means of transport.
Shipping showed rather more improvement ; but it was
not until the introduction of steam power and iron hulls
that the big change came. The speed at which informa-
tion could be transmitted did not alter materially until
the introduction of railways, and not very materially
until the time of the electric telegraph. Even the
original telegraph, the semaphore system by which,
during the Napoleonic Wars, messages were sent from
the south coast to London in about a minute, is
paralleled by the drum-signalling of many quite
primitive peoples. The one big alteration that came
in before the industrial era was m regard to the com-
munication of ideas. Here, the invention of printing,
which was really the first example of mass-production
methods, did really effect a revolutionary change
several centuries earlier.

Now let us take a few threads and see where they run
and how they pull on other threads. I suppose most
people would agree that the internal-combustion engine
has effected the biggest single change in transport after
the introduction of steam, since it brought into being
both the motor-car and the aeroplane, not to mention
motor-ships

The idea of using an explosion of gas or vapour to
drive an engine grew directly out of fundamental

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107

scientific researches on gases and on the nature of
combustion. Proposals for engines of this type were
actually made and patented as early as 1794, but no
workable type was produced, even of a stationary
engine, until after the middle of last century, and
vehicles with internal-combustion engines have less
than fifty years’ history. After an infancy in which
they were jeered at, motors became a luxury, and
then, largely thanks to Mr Ford, a necessity of
everyday convenience and pleasure, whether in the
form of privately-owned cars or motor-buses. Largely
since the War, motor vehicles have claimed an increasing
share of goods transport

All this is an outcome of the work of the scientific
pioneers in the eighteenth century, who found out how
to make different pure gases, and discovered that some
of them would explode violently if ignited in the
presence of air. Its consequences are varied and
enormous.

For one thing, it has done a great deal, especially
in the United States, in breaking down conventions
and making for greater freedom between young people
of opposite sexes — a ferment of the social revolution of
our age. Then it has made new demands upon the
road. Those of you who are middle-aged can remember
the funny business of preparing for a ride in a car in
pre-war days, by swathing yourselves in veils and dust-
coats against the horrible clouds of dust That simply
could not continue ; and the demand for dust-sup-
pression has turned our roads from white to black
(though concrete is turning some of them white again).

Similarly, there has been a demand on the roads for
safety from skidding, for the straightening out of

xo8 SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

bends, for proper banking, for ability to stand up to
much heavier and speedier traffic.

A good deal of experiment was done on this, which has
eventually developed into a wide and well-organized
programme of research at the Road Research Labora-
tory, now under the Department of Scientific and
Industrial Research, at Harmondsworth. Motorists on
the Colnbrook by-pass will probably recollect a spot
where there are two sections of road side by side. One
of these is an experimental road, which is used to test
out different types of road materials and construction
under practical conditions. The laboratory is close by.

All sorts of problems are being tackled here, but as
the station is still very young, little has reached the full
practical stage. I will mention only two. For one
thing, the workers at the Station are busy with the
design of a machine which will really measure road-
wear, but they must have something which in a few
days or weeks will produce on an experimental road the
same sort of effect that actual traffic will produce on
a real road in the course of years.

Then there is the whole problem of accidents : over
six thousand fatal ones every year in this country. Of
these a large number are due to skidding ; and every
motorist knows what a difference there is between
different road surfaces as regards liability to skid. A
machine has now been designed to express this liability
in quantitative terms. It consists of a side-car com-
bination which can be made to drag along at an angle,
and in which the force needed for such a drag can be
recorded. With this, samples of different surfaces can
be quickly tested out and compared as regards what we
may call their skiddability. In this and many other

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109

directions, great improvements m road construction
are being effected

But all this activity on the road has stimulated
the railways to activity on their side. To take one
example, the L M S has now large scientific laboratories,
where the most varied kinds of research are earned out.
The work is in charge of a distinguished academic
scientist, whom they invited from one of the older
Universities a few years back

Here, too, let me give a couple of examples Every
unnecessary expenditure must, of course, be rigorously
excluded. Obviously, one of the biggest items of
expenditure by a railway is coal — the LM.S., for
instance, buys nearly £5 million worth of coal a year !
So if you can make the same amount of coal drive a
train further, you are effecting a big economy. Air
resistance is one of the big factors, especially at high
speeds, so the L.M S. arranged with the National
Physical Laboratory to have a model of the Royal Scot,
complete with tender and six coaches, tested in the
wind tunnels (which were built primarily for research on
aeroplanes, but served equally well for this piece
of work). The tests showed that the Royal Scot, at
sixty miles an hour, without any head-wind, was using
up about four hundred horse-power-*— over a quarter
of the total power it was expending — in overcoming
air-resistance. The tests also showed the exact share
of the engine, tender, and coaches in producing the
air-resistance. This work was, of course, the starting
point for new designs aimed at reducing this terrific
amount of resistance by proper stream-lining.

The research to be undertaken by a railway is varied
— the L.M.S., among other items, is busy with work

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

on steel, on copper for fireboxes, on water-softening
processes to prevent scale in boilers, and on the best
methods of painting. You probably would not think
that painting railway carriages would offer much scope
for science, but by careful research they have arrived
at a new paint which will last a good deal longer, and,
by prolonging the time a carriage can be in use between
its periodic visits to the repair shops, will effect savings
that seem destined to be in the neighbourhood of a
hundred thousand pounds a year !

My general point is that much of this research, I feel
pretty sure, would not be going on if it had not been
for the competition of road transport. As a result of
this, the railways went through a bad period, from
which they emerged with a determination to do some-
thing big to regain some of their lost ground. So we
have intensive research, widespread electrification,
longer week-ends, cheaper return tickets, and all sorts
of facilities which the passengers of an earlier era did
"pot dream of.

Some of these reactions of the railways to the roads,
by the way, have had striking further effects. It
happens that the Southern Railway has done more
towards electrification near London than any other of
the big companies. As a result, there has been more
building development on this side than on the east or
north, for instance. And this, of course, has brought
its own problem of road communication

Among the demands made on the road system by
the growth of motor transport is that for new roads
as outlets from cities — a demand which has given us
roads like the Great North Road, the Kingston by-pass,
and so on. The growth of these new arterial roads itself

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS hi

made a demand upon the scientific spirit, but one
which, alas, has not been satisfied.

The laying out of the roads themselves was done
scientifically enough. The obvious corollary to this
planning of the line of the new road would have been
the planning of the area on either side of the road. But
what has actually happened? Instead of the road
being kept to its real function as an outlet, new suburbs,
almost all in ribbon development, have been allowed to
parasitize the road and turn it into a supplier of local
transport needs, instead of an artery straight from the
heart of the city to the country. The only people
who have profited are the owners of the land on either
side. The dwellers in the new houses have a dangerous
and noisy stream of traffic flowing past them , and the
arterial roads are getting so congested that m some
places they themselves might with advantage be by-
passed ! And this leaves out the blatant ugliness of
the business Contrast this with a road like the
Northern Parkway out of New York, which has been
properly designed so that it does remain arterial, and
also remains beautiful, and the Englishman feels
ashamed at the stupidity of what has happened in his
own country.

This leads on to another problem — the need for a
scientific organization of transport systems, as well as
the scientific improvement of the mechanical means of
transport. As an example of what the scientific
method, in the shape of planning, can do in these
matters, we need not go further afield than London,
with its new gigantic Passenger Transport Board,
which unifies under a single planned control all the
undertakings concerned with moving masses of people

112

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

about — buses, tubes, and trams — over the whole
London area. And we may contrast this with the state
of affairs m the Manchester area, where there are nine
separately-administered undertakings, all running their
own transport services. That means nine central
offices, nine reserves of trams and buses, nine emergency
staffs, nine repair organizations, nine workshops, all
in the one region The unnecessary duplication is
enormous.

There, however, as happened in London, the logic of
the situation is forcing things to a conclusion, and a
move is on foot to amalgamate all the nine in a single
board.

I had a talk with the Chief Engineer of the London
Transport Board at the head offices over St. James's
Park Station, and he told me some of the scientific
research work which they were carrying out. A great
deal of it, it is good to note, is directed towards the
comfort of the passenger. Elaborate studies of noise
are being made with a new instrument, the audiometer,
which measures noise pretty nearly in terms of its
loudness to the hearer, instead of, as with many sound-
measuring instruments, in terms of the amount of
energy, m the scientific sense, which goes to make it.

Does most of the noise in a tube-train come from
reverberation on the walls of the tunnel ? Is it made
mostly by the wheels or the body-work ? Does it come
through the windows or the floor ? What is the effect
of lining tunnels with absorbent material like asbestos
(it must, of course, be fireproof as well as sound-
absorbent) ? And so on. Accurate answers to these
questions are being got by scientific measurement, and
less noisy trains will be the result.

Heston airport in the distance. {See p. 1 1 1.

SKM

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS 113

Then they are measuring the amount of vibration.
I saw a machine for doing this, and the record it had
made of a journey over a few miles of the underground
system The record showed the position and extent of
every vertical bump and every sideways sway, and also
the rate at which acceleration and deceleration — getting
to speed from stop and back again — was achieved.
Another machine measured the actual tiny movements
of a rail as a train goes over it All this is leading to
various improvements in smooth running. Then there
is work on ventilation, which has led, on the new lines,
to ventilating shafts being put between stations instead
of in the stations, and so on.

Even the problem of getting people to and from the
trains can be studied by the scientific method. When
the new Piccadilly Station was projected, they had full-
scale models of its different floors made in pasteboard ;
and, in consequence, were able to make numerous
alterations that could not have been suggested from
the mere study of plans and blue-prints. So here
the research spirit has definitely saved the London
public a certain amount of disagreeable jostling.

But with all the improvements that have been made,
there are other causes outside the scope of even the
most powerful transport board which have brought the
traffic of our big cities into a not very happy state.
The very advances of science which have made it
theoretically possible to get quickly from place to place,
have produced a congestion which is making that result
more and more difficult of attainment.

Let me illustrate this by a little personal experience
When I went to see the Chief Engineer, I motored the
five miles from my house — and was quite badly held
1

H4 SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

up on five occasions. Once it was a string of horse-
carts ; once trams ; once an intersection of two main
arteries of traffic ; once the road was up ; and once it
was a bad block at Piccadilly Circus. Here are at
once five problems for discussion. One : horse-traffic
is cheap for some purposes, but it slows down motor
traffic ; should it be totally or locally prohibited ?
Two : trams were the ideal conveyances in their day,
but in modern conditions they slow down traffic and add
to its dangers; shall we try to replace them, and if so,
with buses, trolley-buses, or what ? Three : you can-
not help traffic intersections ; but should you go to the
large expense of having tunnels for all the traffic that
wants to turn across the opposite-flowing stream, as
they do in some American cities ? Four : at present,
you have to be perpetually taking the roads up and
laying them down again for work on gas mains,
sewers, water-pipes, electric lines; should there be
service tunnels under all main roads, or how else are
we to remedy the inconvenience? Five and finally :
Piccadilly Circus brings up the whole question of town-
planning. When the motor-age overtakes an old city,
you are almost bound to get central congested spots.
How are you going to prevent the congestion becoming
acute ? It is already so acute in some parts of London
and New York that at certain times it is a good deal
quicker to walk than to take a taxi.

But I must not stray too far. I would like to say
that town-planning is, on one side, itself an application
of science, and is becoming increasingly urgent as the
result of other applications of science, such as improved
transport facilities.

Meanwhile, curious things are happening as the result

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

ii5

of applied science, coupled with invention and human
daring, invading the air I shall have more to say in a
later chapter about the share of research in the technical
development of aeroplanes : here I will stick to some
of the results. This country has seen a certain defined
sequence in the development of communications :
first riding and pack animals; then wheeled animal
transport on roads ; then steam and railways ; then the
motor invasion of the roads ; then the invasion of the
fields and rough places by caterpillar tractors and
the invasion of the air by airships and aeroplanes We
have seen the better part of this sequence compressed
into the space of a single generation

To-day, however, in some parts of the globe, the same
sort of development is going on, but m reversed se-
quence. A year or so ago I met a German journalist
who had just come back from a visit to Tadjikistan
and other mountainous Asiatic regions of Soviet Russia.
There, he told me, pack animals were up till quite
recently almost the only means of transport. The first
sign of progress in communications was the aeroplane ;
next came tractors for the fields; only after that did
roads begin to be made and motor traffic to appear ;
while the horse-drawn wheeled vehicle showed up very
little, and last of all !

The same sort of thing is occurring in many parts of
Africa. The aeroplane need not bother much about
marshes and jungle and steep hills; the roads and the
ipilwyys come later. In Africa, too, it is a very moot
point whether railways shall be built at all in certain
districts, or whether good roads and good lorries and
buses will not serve the needs of traffic better and more
cheaply. Much of Africa remained undeveloped until

ii 6 SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

a date sufficiently long after the invention of the
internal-combustion engine for this question to be put.
Fifty years ago there was no such question — the rail-
way was then the only possible solution. That is an
interesting sidelight on the way scientific and technical
progress links up with the accidents of history.

So far I have been talking about the applications of
science to transport — all the devices which promote
travel and getting about from place to place, and make
for a more restless world. But while all this was
happening, other scientific discoveries were being made,
which, though they too were applied in the field of
communications, on the whole worked m the opposite
direction * I mean, of course, the discoveries which have
made it possible for people to have the whole world
brought before their eyes and ears at home, instead of
their having to go out into the world. Printing and
the daily press constitute one of the tendencies working
in this direction ; but perhaps even more important in
the long run were two scientific discoveries of last
century — the discovery of long ether waves and of the
photo-electric properties of metals.

Let us take these in order. Hertz's discovery of the
long ether waves was the first to exert practical effect
in this sphere. Thanks to scientific pioneers like Sir
Oliver Lodge, and brilliant inventors like Marconi,
Hertz's discovery gave birth to a wholly new method
of communication : a modern Ariel with a million
voices — the wireless. Everyone knows the story of its
development — from its first employment as an alterna-
tive to the cable system in sending Morse and similar
messages; its widespread use to ensure the safety of
ships; its technical improvement until it became

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

ii 7

capable of transmitting music and the human voice
without undue distortion ; then the astonishing growth
of broadcasting (some critics are apt to forget that
broadcasting is a very young baby still — less than
fifteen years old) This, of course, has been followed up
with enormous improvements in transmission and
reception ; and recently the introduction of short-wave
systems (which incidentally has been linked up with a
great advance in our knowledge of what the upper
layers of our earth’s atmosphere are like) has made it
possible to transmit all round the world with the
expenditure of very little power.

In the early days, the wireless represented only a
new way of doing an old thing — sending urgent
messages very quickly for long distances. Its one new
feature was that, as it did not depend on fixed channels
of transmission like wires and cables, it could get the
messages to and from places which otherwise could not
be reached — ships are the most obvious example.

But in its later development it is doing something
really new — bringing to the multitude the actual living
voice of statesman and singer, teacher and preacher,
instead of a mere printed account ; allowing you to sit
at home and enjoy concerts and entertainments which
are taking place tens or hundreds of miles away.

But before pursuing this line of thought, let me go
back to photo-electricity. This is the study of the
electrical changes which go on in certain substances
when light falls on them. The rare metal called
selenium is the substance which shows these changes
most strikingly : if light falls upon it, it changes its
electrical resistance.

The photo-electric properties of metals have a great

ii 8 SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

many modern applications — I have already mentioned
two or three, such as the accurate estimation of the
amount of haemoglobin in blood and of the efficiency of
different laundering processes in getting rid of dirt in
the wash. From our present angle, they are important
as having been the original basis of television. All
systems of television depend on the translation, by
means of photo-electricity, of the different intensities
of light and shade in different parts of a subject, into
different intensities of electric current; and then, at
the other end of the process, of the re-translation of
these into light, to form a picture. Selenium cells were
at first used ; the photo-electric properties of the metal
saw to it that the density of different parts of the
electron stream varied with the intensity of the light.

Another great contribution of science to television
is the cathode-ray oscillograph, which grew directly
out of the researches of pure physicists on the curious
things that happened when electric currents were
passed through tubes containing highly rarefied gas.
To-day some systems depend on the emission of a stream
of electrons by a metal plate in a vacuum tube; but
it would be impossible to mention here all the methods
that are being tried out. It looks, however, as if the
recent applications of science to the television problem
are destined quite soon to bring about a radical
improvement in efficiency and practicability. It really
is on the cards now that television will eventually
become as practicable as radio, though it is never likely
to be as cheap.

And then, when people in their own houses can both
see and hear what is going on in the world, sitting at
home will really begin to be quite a rival to rushing

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS 119

around. And when the films are coloured and stereo-
scopic as well as talkie, and perhaps have smell thrown
in too, at least you will have less temptation to travel
instead of going just as far as the nearest cinema-house.

So there are, rather surprisingly, these two opposing
tendencies of progress in communications, one tending
to the increase of wandering, the other to the quiet
evening at home.

There are, however, other aspects of the matter than
this merely physical one. Communications can unify
the minds of people as well as transport their bodies.
The United States, for instance, could not have a real
national life but for the telegraph and other methods
for the speedy transmission of news and ideas. Here
again, modern applications of science are leading to
wholly new developments.

If we want to take a peep into the future, we may,
I think, regard it as pretty certain that a hundred years
hence, telephony and television will be so perfected
that if a statesman is prevented from coming from
Washington or Pekin to Geneva, or whatever will then
be the seat of the successor to our present League of
Nations, he will be able to take part in the discussions
almost as if he were in the room, both heard and seen
by his colleagues on the Committee, and able himself
to hear and see their reactions to his words. This will
clearly simplify the problems of world government a
great deal.

The telegraph and long-distance telephone have
already wholly transformed the relation between
generals and ambassadors and the authorities at home.
Until after the middle of last century, the man on the
spot had to show initiative and take responsibility in

120

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

the same way as a Cabinet Minister at home. To-day,
he is at the end of a wire, and must all the time be
taking either orders or advice

Then broadcasting has given statesmen enormous
new powers. Look at the influence exerted through
this channel m the last few months by Roosevelt and
by Hitler. Broadcasting and the cinema have also
brought new possibilities of propaganda, both in its
bad and its good sense, and of education. The new
vistas opened up in the vast areas of the globe still
occupied mainly by people who cannot read is enormous
— possibilities of intelligent co-operation with govern-
ment, of improved agriculture, of better health, of
recreation and culture.

So I could go on, if I had the space. But I must pass
to another point. Although here, too, improved
communications can link people together, they can
also be employed to keep them apart. It is common
knowledge that in certain parts of Europe, nationally-
controlled broadcasting systems are being used for
nationalist propaganda purposes. More and more
powerful stations are being erected, to ensure the
penetration of this propaganda to greater distances,
or even to swamp or interfere with the broadcasts of
neighbour nations.

Language is another example, so familiar that we
are apt to forget about it. It is essentially an instru-
ment of communication. But it can also become a
badge of difference (as in the Shibboleth incident in
the Bible) ; and to-day, with the spread of nationalist
feeling, languages are more and more becoming organs
of nationalism. To counteract this, we want a scientific
study of the best means of getting world communication

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS 121

by means of an international language, auxiliary to the
national languages already in existence

So here, too, as in all the other fields I have discussed,
the applications of science become entangled with
politics and economics, both affecting them and being
affected by them. The logic of improved transport
and communications is a world-state , the fact of the
existing world is its organization into competing
sovereign national states. The logic and the fact are
in violent conflict; and there the scientist must
perforce leave the problem.

Before I end, I would like to suggest some ideas
for discussion. Here is one The development of flying
has made national boundaries, especially in Europe, look
rather ridiculous ; and all their frontier formalities, of
passport, customs, and immigration regulations, are a
drag on the efficiency of long-distance air journeys.
Should the scientific method be applied in planning an
internationalized world air service ?

Here is another. We have seen that the develop-
ment of broadcasting within the framework of sovereign
national states has led in quite a number of cases to
competition and rival propaganda over the ether — a
wordy war in the air. Should we aim at a regulation
of broadcasting power as we aim at a regulation of
armaments ? Going still further, we have in any case
the radio over-riding national frontiers, and in short-
wave transmission we are developing a method for
broadcasting to the whole world simultaneously. Should
we make the next logical move, of setting up an inter-
national commission to take measures for the intro-
duction of a universal auxiliary language? And, if
so, should this be an artificial language like Esperanto

122

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

BASIC ENGLISH

JOOG^urul i 50

AGREEMENT EXAMPLE Nl*UT*

AMOUNT EXISTENCE MONEY

ANSWER EXPERT MOTHER

TRACKING COW

TttND&NCY cup
THEORY CUSHION

BCPSSSEMTATtTS VOICE

TOMORROW | D I IT* t POTION

41 / *«** Copyrxtid in VSJL

Scientific planning applied to spoken and written communica-
tions The total vocabulary of Basic English, which is capable
of serving as a universal auxiliary language.

[By courtesy of the Orthologtcal Society.

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

123

or Ido, a dead language like Latin, an existing language
like French or English, or a simplified existing language
like Basic English, with or without simplified spelling ?

I said at the outset that m this chapter I was
deliberately not going to tie myself down to the more
straightforward method of treatment I have been using
for other subjects. So I feel that in winding up this
chapter I can allow myself a little more scope than
usual in the way of speculative freedom.

Let us not forget that, far from progress being at an
end, it is going on at a more rapid rate than ever.
During the past two years, man has penetrated into two
new regions of the planet — the stratosphere and the deep
sea. With their new type of hermetically sealed balloon
cars. Professor Piccard, and then the Americans and the
Russians, have reached a layer of the atmosphere where
conditions are altogether different from those near the
surface of the earth — intense cold, low pressure,
absence of cloud, different wind-systems, and so on.
The Americans meanwhile, in their hermetically sealed
diving-bells, have reached an equally unfamiliar zone
of the sea, where there is complete darkness, complete
calm, completely equable low temperature, where no
green plants exist, and where theirs have been the first
human eyes to see the fantastic deep-sea creatures in
natural conditions.

Man can doubtless extend these explorations much
further in both directions. Already the physicists and
mathematicians are discussing the methods by which
a rocket plane could be hurled at enormous speed
through the tenuous resistance of the stratosphere.
Romantically-minded popularizers of science have gone
further, and toyed with the idea of interplanetary

124 SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

communication, whether by signals on a vast scale, or
by actual transport across the huge empty spaces.
That is at the moment an unpractical and fantastic
dream. But do not let us forget that for our descend-
ants (our very remote descendants ! ) it is likely to be a
pressing practical problem. Eventually this earth is
destined to cool down until a point is reached at which
life is no longer possible upon or even within its surface.
The other planets of our solar system are destined to
cool down m the same way. But as they are of very
different sizes, they will cool down at very different
rates, and the bigger ones will of necessity remain as
places where human existence is at least physically
possible long after the earth has become a frozen lump
To be able to cross interplanetary voids then would
in all likelihood mean the prolongation of the life of our
species by many hundred million years. Admittedly
the problem is hardly urgent — the astronomers give us
the probability of a thousand million years' existence
on our present planet. But it is worth remembering
that that is the sort of Last Judgment which science
pictures for humanity.

But interplanetary communication, staggering though
it may be as an idea, represents only a quantitative
extension of ordinary transport. You would still just
be going from one place to another ; the places merely
happen to be farther apart. So let me end with
another speculation, about a development which would
involve a new kind of communication : I mean the
development of telepathy. By telepathy is meant the
direct communication of thought or feelings between
people without the aid of any of the ordinary channels
of expression — words, writing, gesture, facial expression,

SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS

125

and so on. You will find many people firmly believing
m it and many others equally firmly disbelieving. On
the evidence, there seems certainly a strong pnma facie
case for its existence ; but it has so far been impossible
to bring it within the field of science at all By this I
mean that though things happen which seem explicable
only on the assumption of telepathy being a fact, no
one has yet found any way of getting telepathic com-
munication repeated at will, or under any sort of proper
control; so that scientific study of how the process
happens has been impossible.

But if we once grant that it can happen, we must
believe that our descendants will one day be able to
understand, and then to control, its workings. And
then the most extraordinary possibilities open out
Would we be able to open and shut our mmds to
each other at will ? Or if, for instance, it were possible
to get thousands of people all to feel a similar emotion
in telepathic unison, would the emotion itself in each
individual be intensified ? The possibilities are endless.
But they could never be realized unless one first step
can be taken — the first step of giving a scientific
description of telepathy, instead of just having the
probability that it exists Orthodox science at the
moment tends to fight shy of such so-called super-
normal psychology. But this field, as yet scientifically
untilled, might be intensely fruitful. Perhaps m a
hundred years' time there will be a Telepathy Research
Station as well as a Radio Research Station. Meanwhile
the problem is how to make a new field amenable to
scientific research ; and — something new in this survey
of mine — -how to make science itself more scientific in
its approach to this unexplored region of phenomena.

CHAPTER VIII

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY
Discussion with Sir Thomas Barlow

/ H Well, Barlow, I am glad to have you here for
this discussion. You see, I am a very academic scientist,
and my special knowledge is all m a branch of science
remote from application in most of industry. So that
as I go round visiting works and research associations
and universities, and trying to appraise the meaning and
value of science in satisfying social needs, I sometimes
wonder what sort of practical value there really is in the
conclusions I have been reaching. And accordingly I
am very glad to have someone like yourself — someone
who is actually engaged in producing and selling
things — to give an opinion about the relation between
science and industry, because the public is naturally
interested in opinions from the industry end as well as
opinions from the science end

T. B. And I am glad to be here, Huxley. It is an
important subject. I think I had better set the ball
rolling by asking you what general views you have
come to so far on the relation of science to industry.

/. H. Well, first of all, everything I have seen has
strengthened the opinion I held before — that science
and research are absolutely necessary for industry in
this country — necessary not only for its improvement,
but also for its survival.

126

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

127

T B . How do you mean ?

/. H. I mean that conditions are changing so fast all
over the world that you must have research just to
keep up with them ; quite apart from keeping up with
all the research that is going on in other countries.

T. B. Yes, that is true enough. New means of com-
munication are coming into existence, new supplies of
raw materials are being discovered, new markets are
being opened up, new political, economic, and cultural
<\ \ are taking place. Of course, industry

must adapt itself to these new conditions. I take it
you mean that it cannot afford to adapt itself slowly,
hit-or-miss ; — it must use the scientific method.

J. H. Exactly. After all, just as, in the evolution of
animal life, the power of thinking develops as a substi-
tute for the wasteful method of action by trial and
error, so, in the development of civilization, scientific
research comes m as a substitute for the slow, uncon-
scious methods of rule-of-thumb tradition Science
m the long run saves so much time and money and
energy that without it you just get left behind in the
race.

T. B . Yes, I think most people would agree with you
there But that is all very general. I want you to
tell me about the particular ways in which you think
science can help industry.

/. iT. Well, the first thing that has struck me is the
immense value of scientific method for standardization.
I have said a good deal about this in earlier chapters, so
I will not add much here. But it is pretty clear that
an industry cannot be fully efficient unless it has
standard specifications for its raw materials, standard
processes, and standard products. You want standard

128 RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

raw materials, because otherwise you are at sea in your
processes. A builder must know the strength and other
qualities of the steel girders, and of the lime and bricks
he must use. Does it not come in in your field too ?

T . B. Yes, of course — to take only one example, the
more precise knowledge a cotton spinner has of his raw
material, the better his yarn.

/. H Standard materials, yes. Then you obviously
want standard processes, because otherwise you will
get undesirable variations in the product, and waste
in the process. A tanner wants to know the exact
acidity at which the tanning process goes best, as well
as to be provided with standard tanning materials.
The cement manufacturer wants to know the precise
temperature and the exact proportions of silica, alumina,
and lime which give the best results with the least
expenditure ; and the buyer of his product, of course,
wants to be sure it is of standard quality. All this
cannot be ensured unless you make a painstaking, and
often very difficult, scientific study of the raw materials
and the industrial processes involved^ It is rather
dull, unspectacular work on the whole, but seems to
me to be absolutely necessary if an industry is to have
the flexible scientific basis which modern conditions
demand, instead of the slower, more rigid, less con-
scious traditional basis of earlier times.

And then besides standard materials and processes,
I take it you want standard products too.

T. B. Well, in my opinion undue change and an
undue variety of products impede production more than
almost anything else. I am sure that there are at the
present time a great many commodities in which the
existing variety could be reduced with advantage.

aks, at the* Building Research Station, Watford. (See pp. 55,
By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

^ As i .

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

129

Look at man's clothing, for an example. Does the
average man worry very much about his clothes,
provided they are reasonably serviceable and fit him
properly? Would not the majority of mankind have
all it really needs if it were given a quite limited range
of colours, styles, and qualities? Don't you remember
during the War being struck by the extraordinary
improvement in many young men's appearance when
they changed their civilian attire for an officer’s tunic
and breeches ? Yet those garments were essentially
simple in outline and not attractive in colour. I
mention that as an instance of how uniformity of
clothing does not necessarily create an impression of
dull mediocrity.

The same considerations surely apply to lots of things
in everyday household use — electric-light switches,
dusters, telephone receivers, bed-sheets — these are one
or two which come to my mind as I am speaking.
And in the same way why cannot different nations have
the same stamps, the same coinage, the same weights
and measures, the same rule of the road? Variety m
all these only adds to the confusion of life.

/. H. But, my dear Barlow, you are heading straight
for a Robot world 1 Is not variety the salt of life ?

T. B . Your protest, Huxley, leaves me cold. And,
in any case, you did not let me finish.' ' Of course I
do not want standardization in everything. It is to
be avoided wherever emotional or spiritual or aesthetic
values predominate. Rooms would be very dull if
there were only a dozen patterns of furnishing fabrics
to choose from — and as for women's wear, it would be
a very grim business if there were only, say, six patterns
of printed dress materials available. And as for their
K

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RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

underclothes, I don't think they should be made only
from plain white calico. However, we need not worry
about that — the ladies will see to it.

But what I really wanted to say was this. Standardi-
zation in many commodities is a liberating force, and
does not impoverish life aesthetically. In other com-
modities it does, and there we must avoid it.

J. H. I think I agree — with the proviso that even
with products where variety is desirable, you may
need standardization of raw materials and processes;
the variety emerges in the manufacture.

T. B. Agreed. Well, after standardization, what
next ?

J. H. Improvement. It is obvious that once you
have understood the scientific basis of a process— say
making glass, or tempering steel, or scouring wool, you can
begin to improve it scientifically. This type of research,
too, is generally a slow and tedious sort of job. But it
brings sure returns in securing greater efficiency, bigger
output, and better products. Think, for instance, of
the aeroplanes, the radio valves, the artificial silk
fabrics of to-day, and compare them with those which
could be produced in the early days of the industries
concerned. The difference is enormous — and the
improvement has been due in the main to the steady
application of science to the problem. Just the same
would be true if you looked at processes instead of
products; only one needs more special knowledge to
appreciate the progress there has been. I take it you
will agree on this too ?

T. B. Yes, except that I should have imagined that
the results would have been even more spectacular
sometimes.

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY 131

J. H. That is true There is the classical example of
the electric-light bulb. There has been a perfectly
steady improvement from the original lamps of Swan
and Edison, with their splinters of bamboo glowing m a
vacuum, to the lamps of to-day These had an
efficiency (measured m terms of the proportion of the
energy going into them which comes out as light) of
well below 0*5 per cent. The best gas-filled bulbs of
to-day have an efficiency of about 2 per cent. Some
hot cathode lamps m commercial use give one of 10 per
cent., and some still m the experimental stage one of
about 50 per cent In length of life the improvement
has been still greater.

Even since the introduction of our modern gas-filled
tungsten filament bulbs the improvement has been so
great that it would not pay you to take as a gift a lamp
which was the latest pattern five years ago m place of
buying a 1934 type — because its efficiency was less and
its life much shorter. This pronouncement was made
to me by the head of the research laboratories of an
important firm m the electrical industry.

Then what is going on in the metal-testing depart-
ment of the National Physical Laboratory and a number
of other places is spectacular enough. For instance,
they are doing some most interesting work on what is
called creep in a metal such as steel — very, very slow
distortion under whatever forces are acting on the
metal. With lead, which is soft, creep may be obvious :
the lead in lead roofs may actually move downwards,
causing the roof to thm out near the top and be
thickened and thrown into waves near the bottom.
But even the hardest steel is subject to some degree of
creep. It is important, naturally, to keep this down

132 RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

to a minimum in fine machinery, and so you have the
testing of different steels for low creep — you put a
heavy load on the piece of steel at whatever temperature
is needed, and then, by means of a special device,
measure its infinitesimal movements. Until quite
recently the highest standard was that a bit of metal
of a given length should not show a movement of more
than one millionth of its length per day. Recently,
however, new machines, such as high-speed turbines,
put such demands on their materials that the manu-
facturers themselves have demanded a test a hundred
times more strict — one part in a hundred million per
day — which means a permissible change of well under
a twenty-thousandth part of an inch during a year in
a piece of steel a foot long. Think of what that means
in terms of skill m making steel !

T. B. Yes, that is spectacular enough 1

J. H. But I want to ask your opinion about another
kmd of improvement — invention. I have the impres-
sion that we do not do nearly enough to mobilize
inventive genius. And by inventive genius I mean
something rather different from scientific genius. The
inventor is someone who has (or thinks he has) a flash
of insight about improving a machine or a process.
He may be all wrong about the scientific basis of his
idea, and extremely vague about the practical means of
applying it. But the idea may be very valuable. As
things stand in this country, the inventor often gets
lost in the mazes of the patent law, or, if he manages
to get a business man to take any interest at all in him,
finds himself forced to sell his invention at a ridiculously
low figure.

T.B. Well, Huxley, I can only say that my experience

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

133

has been that the business man is much more likely to
lose money on a new invention than to make it, though
I admit there are exceptions.

J. H. But that emphasizes just what I wanted to
bring out — the need for organizing invention and
incorporating it into the framework of industry In
Soviet Russia they have a very interesting system for
encouraging inventors, and, if their ideas are any good,
of giving them a thorough scientific training and a
better position The only attempt I have seen in this
country to link up invention with industry — as science
has already been linked up — was m a firm which made
machines for making boots and shoes — wonderful
machines a lot of them are, too Here they had a set
of rooms occupied by a staff of six or eight men officially
styled Inventors, under a senior Inventor, who were
busy all the time with ideas improving the machines
In ^mother office was a staff of Designers, who were
responsible for the job of realizing the inventors" ideas
m the practical designs.

T. B. I see — you mean the inventor is rather a special
type, and you want to use him to the best advantage ?

J. H. Exactly. But we must get back to research in
general Next comes something much more spectacu-
lar — research which leads to new processes Sometimes
it may lead simply to the substitution of a new process
for an old, with an increase m efficiency, but without
any particular effect on the product In an earlier
chapter I gave an example from the leather industry — the
substitution of the clean and accurate trypsin process
for the dirty and untidy use of animals" dung. Or the
new process may be so much of an improvement that it
transforms the industry.

134 RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

T. B . Yes, like chemical bleaching m the industry
to which I belong. You mentioned this in one of your
previous chapters, and pointed out that without
chemical bleaching it would have been impossible to
produce cotton goods on a large scale and at a low
price.

/. H . Yes, I think that is as good an example as one
could find. Or again, the new process may lead to the
introduction of a new kind of product. I saw an
example of this in the big Brown-Firth steel works at
Sheffield, where research led to the production of
rustless and stainless steel. Or there is vita-glass—
or high-speed tools with the properties of best steel,
but with no iron in the alloys of which they are made
— or the application of low-pressure gas tubes to street
lighting.

Or the product may be so new as to become the basis
of a new branch of industry altogether. The classical
example is Faraday busy in the laboratories of the
Royal Institution with funny-looking coils of wire —
and laying the foundations of the whole of electrical
industry. A more modern instance is Fleming's
discovery of the new principle now used in all wireless
valves.

Improvement of this type may be sporadic — the
result of the research of a gifted individual in a Univer-
sity laboratory, for instance. Or it may be systematic :
let me give examples of what I mean by this. We
exist under a pressure of fifteen pounds to the square
inch, and are used to the way things happen at that
pressure. But at higher pressures many things happen
quite differently. For instance, at a pressure of a few
hundred atmospheres, all sorts of reactions involving

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY 135

gases will take place which otherwise will not occur
except at huge temperatures. It was research of this
sort which led the great German scientist Haber to
perfect his method for using the nitrogen of the air to
make ammonia, and with the ammonia to make
fertilizers and all sorts of other important substances.
I suppose this work did more to prolong Germany's
powers of resistance to our blockade than that of any
other single man.

The other day I was visiting the wonderful research
laboratory at the Alkali branch of Imperial Chemical
Industries, at Northwich, and there they told me that
Haber gave a lecture in England in 1911 on some of
the theoretical aspects of this work. If at the time
they had been engaged on systematic research on gas
reactions at a few hundred atmospheres, in all prob-
ability, they said, they would have realized the practical
possibilities inherent in his talk, and we too should have
had the ammonia process of fixing nitrogen during the
War. As it was, British science had not the necessary
background, and Britain had to wait ten years for cheap
nitrogen.

They are determined not to be caught out again,
so they are now systematically surveying what happens
— not at a few hundred atmospheres, for that field is
now pretty well explored — but at a few thousand
atmospheres — round fifty thousand pounds to the
square inch, which is the sort of pressure you get inside
a big naval gun at the moment of the explosion !

At this sort of pressure, many liquid reactions
involving organic compounds go on altogether differ-
ently from what they do in ordinary terrestrial con-
ditions. In addition to the great scientific interest of

136 RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

the work, they expect to obtain important practical
results themselves, as well as gaining the background
which will enable them to appreciate the implications
of similar work published by others.

Eventually they may start working with tens of
thousands of atmospheres — under which conditions
the most extraordinary things may happen : phosphorus,
for instance, goes black and changes its properties so
that it behaves like a metal !

The electrical experiments with enormous voltages
which I saw at Metro-Vickers and at the National
Physical Laboratory are rather similar. Apart from
lightning, such electrical conditions do not exist on
this planet. To study them means studying a little
artificial world that science has created. Or take one
more example — the behaviour of substances at intensely
low temperatures, only a few degrees above absolute
zero. Man has now brought the temperature of
interplanetary space into his laboratories; and he
finds that at these temperatures, electrical properties
change profoundly — electncal resistance, for instance,
practically disappears; so that a current will go on
for years and years flowing round and round a closed
circuit without appreciable loss

T. B. That point about the need for the right back*
ground is specially interesting to me. I think it
applies to owners and directors as much as to research
workers.

J. H . I am glad to hear you say that. I want to bring
it up later. But meanwhile let me finish my catalogue
of the results of research. I have only got one more
: item, and that is research to discover new uses of
' materials and products. For instance, when I visited

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY 137

the Glass Technology Department of Sheffield Uni-
versity, I heard a good deal about the new uses of glass.
Glass is chemically very resistant : it can be made
opaque, or slightly translucent so as to let through a
faint light of any colour you like : it can be made in
blocks of any desired shape or size. All these properties
are valuable for building And, as a matter of fact,
glass has been used for building houses for some time :
there are several glass houses on view at the World's
Fair m Chicago. Then it can be made black, m sheets,
as a surface lining. It has been used thus on the
outside of the new Daily Express building m Fleet
Street, and, m combination with stainless steel, to line
the inside of the new road tunnel under the Mersey,
so as to prevent dazzle.

r. B. That sounds attractive
J. H. Yes — I should like to see it. Then, too, a great
deal of research is going on m various laboratories on
new uses for coal. Every one has heard of the processes
for getting petrol out of coal, whether by low-
temperature carbonization or by the higher-yielding
method of hydrogenation, which is now about to be
put into commercial practice on a large scale by I.C.I.
But other important work is going on, designed to
produce really satisfactory smokeless fuels for domestic
purposes, from coal and from coke. (In regard to coke,
the chief trouble in the past has been the vanation in the
standard and quality of the product ) This smokeless
fuel work, of course, is of value not only to the pro-
ducers and users of the fuel, but to the nation as a
whole — in reducing the ridiculous waste — waste of
valuable substances discharged into the air, waste of
paint and stone and metal corroded by fumes, waste of

138 RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

physical and mental health engendered by the foul and
unnecessary smoke-palls over all our great cities.

While we are on the subject of new uses, perhaps you
can tell me something about research into new uses for
cotton ?

T. B. Well, I believe you mentioned in an earlier
chapter the huge use of cotton in motor tyres, and
its growing employment for insulating material. In
addition, I believe there is immense scope for new fabrics,
especially those consisting of mixtures of cotton with
other materials. I think that can be classified as a
new use .

J. H. Yes, I think it can. Well, that is a list of the
divers ways in which science can be applied m industry
— standardizing materials and processes, improving
processes, introducing new processes and products, and
finding new uses for materials.

T, B. That is an impressive list all right. But look
here, Huxley, is the work being organized in the right
way, in your opinion ?

J. H. Yes, that problem of organization is important.
It also involves asking where all the funds for research
come from. That sounds a bit dull, but I don't think
it is really.

T . B . Well, where the money comes from does not
sound a dull subject to me ! Go ahead ! let us hear
what you have got to say about the organization of
research.

J, H. All right. I have been finding out something
about it during these last few weeks. In the first
place, you may have research carried out, and of course
paid for, by private firms, big or little. Then there is
the work that goes on in the Research Associations

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY 139

under the Department of Scientific and Industrial
Research (let me save trouble by giving it its usual
abbreviation — D.S.I.R). These are each controlled
by a particular branch of industry. Some of the money
for them comes from Government sources, the rest
from subscriptions from the firms who are members
(by no means all of the firms in the industry belong).
I have been to see a good many of these institutions —
for instance, those dealing with wool, cotton, leather,
and laundering ; but there are plenty of others — about
twenty m all

Then there are the special Research Stations, also
under the DSIR., which deal with problems where
the interests of the consumer or the nation at large
are so important that the Government wants to keep
a good deal of control. So most of the money for them
comes from Government sources They deal with
problems like building, about which I said a good deal
in an earlier chapter, cold storage, radio, forest products,
and fuel research.

There is also that wonderful place the National
Physical Laboratory, which m many of its activities
acts as a central research institution for industrial
problems too large-scale or too long-range to be carried
on elsewhere. This also is under the D.S I R.

And then, of course, there is all the work carried on
at Universities. Many people either forget or do not
know how much of the work done at these so-called
academic institutions is closely linked up with
industrial needs. Leaving out of account what I may
call the “ background research ” in very pure science,
the applications of which cannot yet be seen (though
we can be sure from the history of science that one day

140 RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

they will be of immense importance), there exist depart-
ments m which very practical research is going on :
civil, chemical, and electrical engineering, metallurgy,
mining, oil technology, leather research, textiles, dyeing,
fuel research, brewing, and so on. As one would expect,
there are proportionately more of these in the newer
universities of industrial towns like Sheffield or Leeds
or Manchester than m London, Oxford, or Cambridge ;
but this type of semi-practical department is growing
in the older universities as well. Some of the money
comes from special endowments, old and new, and a good
deal out of the Government Grant to Universities.

T. B. Well, did you reach any conclusions as to the
part to be played by these different types of research
organizations ? For instance, when a firm is a member
of a Research Association, is there any value in its
carrying on with research on its own ?

J. H. Oh, yes. By no means all of them undertake
work on their own — but those that do seem to find it
pay. There are specia] objectives which one firm may
have — like the so-called creaseless cotton I spoke of
earlier — which it could not entrust to a central organiza-
tion if it wanted to keep the advantages to itself. This
is the obvious sort of reason for doing your own re-
search. Other examples are the new pattern wireless
valves and the new kinds of lighting I saw at the
General Electric Company, and the new, almost noise-
less, electric motors for fans and so on that they are
working out at Metro-Vickers.

But there is another and equally important reason
for a private firm doing research — I touched on it in
connection with the high-pressure work going on at
I.C.I. It is to have on the spot a background of

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY 141

research knowledge and the research spirit which will
enable the firm to understand the value of the research
done elsewhere, and so be able to apply it at once and
in the right way. This is not of value only for large
firms I came across one quite small firm, devoted
almost exclusively to making small electric switch-gear,
the director of which told me that not only was research
essential for him if he was to achieve real improvement
of his products, but also for keeping cost down — for
instance, he had research m progress on the raw
matenals he bought, so as to be able to tighten up
standards and specifications.

Those, I think, are the mam functions of research
by single firms. The mam aim of work undertaken by
Research Associations is rather the standardization and
improvement of processes and products common to the
industry as a whole or to large sections of it — the slow
but vital work I spoke of earlier. Single firms, save
for a few very big ones, cannot be expected to tackle
this type of long-range work.

T. B. Well, how do the Universities come in ? Are
not their departments of applied science engaged in the
same sort of long-range work ?

/. iT. No, not altogether. Naturally there is an
overlap ; but, on the whole, as you would expect, they
are working on the problems rather more remote from
application — the more basic questions. Often they
do so to such good purpose that they convert a field
which you would think was applied science into a
pure science in its own right. Metallurgy is a good
example of this. Don't forget, too, that half the
job of these University Departments is training —
training men to go out into industry imbued with

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the scientific spirit as well as equipped with scientific
knowledge.

T. B. That brings up a point I made earlier — one that
worries me a good deal — the scientific training of
owners and directors in industry. It is not a question
of technical training so much as proper background.

J. H. Is not the trouble with many business people
that they do not really grasp what the scientific spirit
means ?

T. B. I am afraid, Huxley, you are right. It is not
merely a question of getting more trained scientists
on our staffs. We ourselves, the directors and the
proprietors, whatever we may be, do require training
just as much as anybody else. We do not want to do
the job ourselves, but we want to know what it means—
what, so to speak, the language is, and what our fellows
are talking about. Science, research, the scientific
spirit, does not merely mean that you have a depart-
ment where a number of persons sit over microscopes
and pour liquids from one test-tube to another, but a
fundamental attitude of mind ; and I will admit quite
frankly that we, or shall I say many of us, have been
very remiss in this respect.

/. H. Is not that the reason for the rather lamentable
fact that a number of Industrial Research Associations,
in spite of substantial grants from Government funds,
have become rather feeble or even defunct — the Cutlery
Research Association at Sheffield is an example ?

T. B. I suppose so ; though, of course, bad times have
contributed to it. In bad times, people will either
give up the expense of research altogether, or concen-
trate on it rather desperately as a possible way out.

/. H . Well, the expense is not so very large, you know.

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

143

As far as I can make out, the cost of research associa-
tions comes to less than a shilling per £100 of net
output — less than 0*05 per cent.

T. B . H'm — that certainly is not much.

J. H. No — especially when you contrast it with the
amounts spent on advertisement. But would you think
it reasonable that the Government should insist on more
science, as a quid pro quo for what it does for industry,
in the way of all the money it spends itself on scientific
research, or as a premium on the efficiency which it
surely has a right to demand if it gives an industry a
protective tariff ? You might have a levy on sales, or
you might take a percentage of tariff receipts to make
your central research fund.

T. B. These are rather thorny questions, aren't they ?
though well worth thinking over. But there is another
even more general point that I do very much want to
discuss. So far w r e have been assuming that science
has been useful to industry in the past, and could be
equally useful m the future. But, you know, there are
some people who would like to lock up you and your
fellow scientists, or at least keep you from doing any
scientific work for ten years, or even for the term of
your natural lives, because they feel that science is
multiplying human needs so fast that it is making it
harder for people to live a life that is really worth
living.

J. H . That is going a bit far, isn't it ? — though I do
feel that eventually we shall have to try to adjust the
tempo of research to the tempo of social development.
But do you feel like that, Barlow* ?

T. B . No, »1 do not. All the same, I do feel like
repeating this question ; Is not science doing us a

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RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

disservice by unduly multiplying our wants? The
moralists would have us believe that a man's happiness
consists m the fewness of his wants — and we only
increase the complications of life when we multiply
the number of material commodities in the world.

J. H. That is true from one angle On the other
hand, you do find to-day one school of social philo-
sophers who preach that consumption is the great
moral duty, don't you ? It is a far cry from the views
of Samuel Smiles and the waste not , want not, school of
thought, and does help to prove that morality is relative
to economic and social facts.

T. B. Moral duty ! but this is not a discussion on
morality, my dear Huxley.

/. H. I know ; but you started it, Barlow.

T. B. All right, but leaving morals out, it is futile to
try to turn our backs on science and say, “No more of
this." Some people seem to think it possible for life
and thought to stop at a given point — thus far and no
further — but when life and thought stop, all we have is
decay and death. Do we really want to smash up all
our machines and go back to a new Middle Ages?
Surely life can be just as much enriched by variety as
it can be complicated and confused ?

J. H. Very true. But we still remain in a great mess
owing to our so-called over-production.

T. B. Yes, But have we called all the resources of
science to our aid? What have we done in the way
of using science to study consumption and distribution,
as we have done for production ?

/. H . Next to nothing, as far as I know. But give
me some examples of what you mean.

T. B. Well, why is it that there is such a great increase

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

145

in the price of an article between the time when it
leaves the factory and when it gets on to the counter
of a shop? — a difference amounting often to over a
hundred per cent. ?

y. H. That, I suppose, is due partly to the high over-
heads. But is it not also due partly to the chaos that
exists in retail distribution ? I read recently that there
were about six hundred thousand shops in this country
— one to every seventy inhabitants — with no system of
regulation, no attempt to see if the owner knows
anything about what is really rather a difficult job to
do well. Or look at the business of distributing milk.
In some streets there are three separate firms who send
their vans every morning. Would it not reduce costs
if you could get one firm supplying one area entirely,
instead of having to dodge in and out like this ?

T. B. Doubtless that is true. But the mam thing,
I feel, is that we do not really know enough ; that we
just have not got the facts on which we could make a
decision as to a course of action — at least a scientific
decision. In this held we are without even the basis
for science.

/. H. I am interested to hear you say that. For some
time it has seemed to me that the first step towards
getting a scientific outlook in economic and social
matters is the proper collection and organization of
facts. You could not have had modem biology until
after the early naturalists had collected specimens of
animals and plants from all over the world and arranged
them in museums. In sociology, facts are the speci-
mens, and proper statistics take the place of museum
arrangement. Ought we not to have a really compre-
hensive statistical department, under Government

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

146

control, to collect the facts we need and arrange them
in logical and convenient ways ?

T. B. I quite agree with you, Huxley ; and I would
add that a great many of us manufacturers are much too
suspicious about letting out statistics. The Americans
are streets ahead of us in this respect.

/. H. Absolutely. Well, if there were a really
adequate statistical authority in existence, then you
would begin to get people linking up the facts about
trade with the facts about population, the facts about
public health with the facts about wages, and so on ; and
when assured knowledge comes in at the door, partisan
spirit flies out at the window. You do not find people
getting all worked up and holding elections to decide
whether the chemical composition of water is H 2 0 or
something quite different. A good dose of hard facts
is the best remedy for party passions and hasty
actions.

T. B. I must just put in an example on a small scale,
from trade. I have heard of an enterprising firm of
tailors that study the census returns very thoroughly,
district by district, to find out just what sort of demand
there is likely to be for gents' suitings adapted to men
of different ages and social classes — with excellent
commercial results.

J. H . Yes. That is an example of what one can do
with the very limited statistics at present at our
disposal. But just think of all the things you could
study scientifically and arrive at undisputed conclusions
about, if you had all the relevant facts to play with —
all the things you cannot study now. Just as you
cannot discover a new scientific law without you or
someone else having first amassed a great deal of

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

147

scientific fact by means of patient study and measure-
ment.

T. B . Yes. To take just one example, I have often
wondered about advertisement. Obviously much
advertising is useful and necessary, for the public as
well as the advertiser ; but equally obviously, one would
think, there is some advertising going on which is
useless or wasteful — or even harmful.

J. H. Quite. And there is no means at present of
finding out where the line should be drawn.

T . B. But I suppose one could find out ?

/. H. Y'es, undoubtedly, if we could get the facts and
have them properly analysed — as we could if we would
take a bit of trouble. That is another of the subjects
on which industry could get really reliable information if
we had the machinery for studying it in a scientific way.

T. B. But our time is running out, Huxley, and we
have not mentioned what I suppose is the most difficult
problem of distribution and consumption, the greatest
issue of all in relation to industry — I mean, of course,
unemployment.

/. H. Unemployment — yes, I agree. If one can just
manage to detach oneself from the misery and waste
of it all, one cannot help reflecting on the irony of the
situation. Here we have been talking about the
wonders of the labour-saving machinery for the last
century; and now that it really is saving labour, we
are taken unprepared For, after all, the aim of
labour-saving machinery should be to save labour,
should it not? Yet you find people seriously worried
at the prospect of machinery being able to do the hard
work of the world with human labour reduced on
the average to only a few hours a day.

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However, it is difficult to see where science can come
in, so long as the direction of affairs is in the control
of politicians — no, I should really say in the control
of blind economic and social forces that play with the
politicians as much as they do with the common man

T. B But could not applied science feed and clothe
and shelter not merely our present population, but
double that amount ?

J.H I daresay. But why, my dear Barlow, are you
so anxious to see more people m the world ? Quality
of life, not just quantity, is surely the proper aim. But
I do think that in bringing up this question, you have
reminded me of something where science could help us
in the present crisis. We could use science and the
scientific method to study the problem of population,
with a view to its ultimate control. You see what
important issues are at stake. Yet in regard to birth-
control, which is, after all, the most potent factor in
any possible control of population, almost all the
research that is going on in this country is under a small
private committee which manages to raise a few
hundred pounds a year by voluntary subscriptions !

T. B . Yes, it is obvious that there is a lot of scientific
research and hard thinking to be done in this field.
But one thing seems certain — whatever happens, the
average man and woman, thanks to applied science,
are going to have a great deal more leisure on their
hands.

/. H. Yes. That is what I meant about labour-
saving devices really saving labour.

T. B. But what are people going to do with all their
leisure ?

J. H . Ah, now you are asking ! But, in any case, we

RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY 149

shall need a great deal of careful planning and organiza-
tion to provide exciting, interesting, and satisfying
outlets for people m their leisure time.

T. 23. That blessed word planning ! I am a little
shy of it. Do you really think you can plan everything ;
or that, if you can, life will be worth living?

J H. Now you are raising a question which would
need another half-hour’s discussion before we even
began to see an answer f I entirely agree that there
can be bad planning as well as good planning, and that
bad TTvmin'T obviously would have disastrous results;
but, in the most general terms, is not planning an
attempt to apply the scientific method all round, as
w T e have already applied it to a fair extent in industry,
and is not the alternative to planning, m the present
state of civilization, merely chaos ?

T. B. I suppose it is — but do not let us have any
illusions about planning being a panacea. Some
people seem to think that something valuable will
result if they just say the word planning often enough —
just as they did with the word rationalization ten years
ago.

J. H. No, I have no illusions on that point. But I
have real faith m science, and believe that in the long
run human reason, employing the scientific method,
will enable us to control our destiny.

CHAPTER IX

SCIENCE AND WAR

T HIS chapter was not an easy one to plan out. One
could approach the subject from so many angles.
Perhaps I had better begin by giving a sort of table of
contents, so that my readers can pick up the steps in
my argument more easily.

To begin with, I cannot describe much war research,
because most of it is kept secret. What one does know,
however, is the amount of money spent by the Govern-
ment on it ; this is very large.

Then I shall argue that so long as there is a risk of
war we must use science in our preparations for it,
to get greater efficiency ; but that we should also try
to use science to reduce the risk of war.

In passing, I shall show how we cannot use science
for war purposes without getting some set-off in the
shape of useful peace-time improvements, and shall
illustrate this by examples, especially from research
on aviation. All the same, we could get the useful
results much more easily by research aimed directly at
them.

I shall say something on the need for cutting down
wasteful expenditure in war research, and then go on
to the point about using science to help disarmament.
This can be done in part by making a detailed technical
study of armament, which reveals the fact that there

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SCIENCE AND WAR 151

will always be several months' lag in reaching the mass-
production of armament material needed for modem
warfare — whether you start from scratch, or have to
convert a factor from peace-time uses This leads
to the conclusion that to minimize the risk of war, the
large-scale manufacture of war material should, as
far as possible, be prohibited m peace-time, for this
will give a time-lag before full-scale hostilities can
begin, during which arbitration may get busy. In
this connection I shall also discuss the attitude of
scientists to the use of science for war preparations.

Science could also undoubtedly help in research
upon the actual causes of war, psychological, economic,
and political; but the astonishing fact emerges that
no organized research at all has been done on these
problems.

Meanwhile, it seems clear that so long as the world is
organized into national sovereign states, the risk of
war will continue to be very high ; so here again science
is up against political facts, and can only suggest that
the most important step to reduce the immediate risk
of war is some surrender of sovereign rights by nations
to a supernational authority.

That, roughly, is the outline of what I am going to say.
I am sure I shall be criticized, from both sides; but
the dispassionate setting down of facts, so far as they
are available, cannot well do harm, and that is what
I shall try to do.

You will note I say “ so far as available." That is
because, as everyone knows, a great many of them are
not available. Secrecy is the all-but-universal accom-
paniment of war research.

One thing available, however, is the expenditure

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SCIENCE AND WAR

on research, which any one can dig out of Government
documents : and we may perhaps begin with that.

For comparison we may take the amounts spent on
some other kinds of research. For instance, on research
connected directly or indirectly with industry m the
year 1931-32 the Government spent, through the
D.S.I R., a little over half a million pounds ; and on
medical research, through the Medical Research Council,
£139,000.

When we come to the Services, matters are more
difficult to interpret, for in the parliamentary estimates
of service expenditure, you will sometimes find
included under research all sorts of expenses incurred
for technical development which would not be classed
as research by a private firm, and would not be
undertaken at all by bodies like the D.S.I R. or the
M.R.C.

To take one example, the total budgeted for Research
and Technical Development in this year’s Air Estimates
is over one and a third million pounds. But only about
one-third of a million pounds goes to what can really
be called research. Development is purely technical,
not what is usually called “ development research/’ and
is a different branch, under a separate head. Even so,
one-third of a million pounds for air research — more
than twice as much as what is spent by the Government
on medical and health research — is a lot of money, and
a hundred thousand pounds for gas research is another
heavy item. There can be no doubt that the total
spent by the Service Departments on what can
legitimately be called scientific research is well over a
million a year. This would be of the same order of
magnitude, though I think actually not quite as much,

SCIENCE AND WAR

153

as the Government expenditure in all other kinds of
research lumped together.

This is a bit of a shock. But you must not forget
several important facts. First, whereas there is rela-
tively little research for war purposes that is not
financed by the Government (the only exceptions are
the makers of rather special armaments, like tanks or
aero engines or armour-plate), there is a great deal for
peace purposes In industrial research, for instance,
private firms subscribe rather more each year to the
Research Associations than comes from Government
sources, and the amount spent by private firms on
their own research is probably not less than two
million pounds

Similarly, in medicine there is all the work done by
the hospitals ; and in pure science, all that done by the
Universities and special research institutions, out of
the proceeds of fees or, more usually, special endow-
ments ; all the work made possible by Rockefeller and
other special fellowships ; and so on.

This makes a difference , and so does the fact that
the half-scale and full-scale work — development re-
search — must inevitably be larger in proportionate
amount in w r ar than in industry 7 , for instance. Take air-
ships as an extreme example — think of the amount
which large-scale research must have cost in proportion
to the actual costs of construction — m a sense, the con-
struction was research. But the same sort of thing
happens in regard to new types of tanks or aeroplanes,
where an enormous amount of research must go on in
respect of a total output which would seem relatively
very small in industrial practice.

Yet even when all such allowances are made, the

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SCIENCE AND WAR

amount spent on research for war purposes does loom
very large — all this money being spent on pre-
paring more efficient destruction, or on more efficient
defence against destruction, which would not be
needed if there were no risks of war

What are we to say about this aspect of scientific
research ? As far as I can see, there is only one truly
realistic attitude to be adopted about the relation
between science and war. I leave out of account
the revolutionary attitude, such as that of Communism,
which is directed towards overthrowing by force the
present type of government, since, whatever its views
might be at present on the ideal desirability of abolishing
war, in the event of its success it would immediately
be confronted with the same problem as now confronts
existing governments, bourgeois or otherwise. We
have seen this happen in Soviet Russia : a communist
state, pledged to the ultimate ideal of world peace,
has been forced by the logic of facts into very large
military expenditure.

The realistic attitude as I see it is this — that so long
as there is a real risk of war, the fullest resources of
science should be used for two purposes : to make
warfare as efficient as possible from the military point
of view at the lowest possible cost, and also to make
war as unlikely as it is possible to make it in a world of
independent sovereign states.

I contrast this realistic view with two opposed
unrealistic views — one that of the emotional pacifist
who brands as immoral any scientific man who gives
any help whatever in war matters ; the other that of
the emotional patriot who puts the increase of arma-
ments before anything else, and would like science as a

SCIENCE AND WAR 155

whole to be dragooned in the interests of war. The
former is unrealistic in not taking account of the real
risk of war m present circumstances; the latter is
unrealistic in not seeing that heavy armaments, as well
as increasing the risk of war, constitute an impossible
strain on the resources of a nation.

There are, of course, all possible variations on
these main themes. Many people adopt half the
realistic attitude — the half about using science to
make war more efficient if it does come ; but do not
think about its other side — the possibility of using
science and the scientific method to reduce the risk
of war. This is as if a state-run fire insurance company
were to employ all the resources of statistics and
scientific management in calculating its premiums
and dealing with its business routine, but to take no
steps to enforce building regulations about safety
from fire outbreak, or to reduce arson.

But I shall come back later to this aspect of science
in relation to war. For the moment, let me concentrate
on the first half of my thesis.

This, be it observed, is not the same thing as the old
Latin adage that if you wish peace, you should prepare
for war. It asserts something much less sweeping —
and much less questionable — that if you prepare for
war, you should prepare for it scientifically.

The reason is simple. If you do not, then m the event
of another war, you will be overwhelmed. Let us
first get quite clear about this. Between 1911 and
1925, the size of the biggest naval guns increased from
12-inch to 16-inch, with an increase of weight of
projectile from 850 to 2,000 lbs., an increase of
range from rather over 11 to nearly 20 miles, and a

SCIENCE AND WAR

156

greater accuracy at high ranges. Now, since in naval
warfare, so long as big ships are used at all, victory
(I quote the expressive words of the Encyclopedia
Britannica ) " will always rest with the side that can
hit the hardest at the longest range,” it is pretty
obvious that to keep a navy and not to use all the
resources of pure and applied science to increase the
size and range of your guns, is pure waste of life and
money.

Or take another example. The most spectacular
single change in war methods which arose during the
Great War, apart from the introduction of aeroplanes,
was the use of gas It does not seem probable, from
what we know of organic chemistry, that any radically
new gases capable of military use, more deadly than
those already discovered by the end of the war, are
now at the disposal of any nation. But if a new war
broke out in the near future, gas warfare would be
something quite different from what it was in the last
war. The main reasons for this assertion are, first,
that what might prove to be one of the most horribly
effective of all gases, Lewisite, was discovered so late
that it never came into actual use on a large scale;
secondly, that new methods of projecting gas make it
possible to get an area flooded with gas in concentra-
tions hardly dreamt of before the last months of the
last war — concentrations which would render quite
inefficient some of the standard types of gas-mask
then used ; and thirdly, that the big industrial nations
have behind them an experience in manufacturing
poison gas which in any fresh war would make possible
its use on a much greater scale.

In the circumstances, not to try to bring up the

SCIENCE AND WAR

157

efficiency of gas-masks as far as possible beyond the
point where the last war left them, even leaving out
of account the need for protecting the civilian popu-
lation, is simply to invite overwhelming defeat m the
next infantry battle

The same applies to mechanized transport like
tanks, to aviation, to submarines, to machine-guns —
m fact to every other weapon or branch of war. To
neglect science and the improvements which arise
from its application is to render your whole preparations
for war inefficient and virtually useless

That being so, it is at least a slight comfort to recall
some of the peace-time advantages which have come
out of the applications of science to war-time needs.
I am not advocating war as a method of securing
scientific advance — that is, like the method described
by Charles Lamb in the Essays of Elia — of burning
your house down to get roast pork I just want to
remind my readers of a fact — that there is something
to set off on the credit side against all the horrors
registered in the debit column when considering the
effects of using scientific methods of waging war.
Of course, this is really obvious-rscience is an all-round
method, and any given scientific discovery is in itself
ethically neutral. So you can no more prevent scientific
work carried out for war purposes from having peace
uses than you can help the general advance of peace-
time science from throwing up facts and ideas which
can be used for war. Let me remind you that none of
the gases actually used in the last war was discovered
in the search for a war gas. Mustard gas, for instance
(together with a knowledge of all its unpleasant
physiological effects), was discovered in the ordinary

158

SCIENCE AND WAR

routine of chemical exploration, some sixty years
before the Great War broke out.

Let us look at a few instances where science in the
service of war has conferred permanent gifts on peace.
The most obvious example is aviation. It is quite
certain that we should not be able to-day to fly at
will from England and France to Central Africa, from
Holland to the East Indies, from New York to San
Francisco, if it had not been for the stimulus given
by the war to aviation, in theory and practice — and,
let me add, if it had not been for the heroism of aviators.
Not only was aerodynamics thus stimulated, but in
the search for lightness, an impetus was given to the
search for light and strong metallic alloys which has
given birth to what is virtually a new branch of
metallurgy. In a similar way, the demands made on
the toughness of armour-plate and on resistance to
huge pressures in big guns, on accuracy in turbines
(first used for naval purposes), have given us new
heavy alloys and new standards of accuracy in steel
manufacture which are proving of great service for all
kinds of purposes.

Less spectacular, perhaps, than the stimulus of the
war to aviation, but of far-reaching importance, was
its stimulus to roadless transport. If it had not been
for the tank, efficient caterpillar tractors would un-
doubtedly not by now have appeared on the peace-
time scene, and we should be without the possibility
I spoke of in an earlier chapter, of converting our
barren moorlands into good grazing land, or perhaps
of having large trains of caterpillar vehicles forging
across the roadless expanses of Africa or Asia — this
latter possibility one waiting for some enterprising

SCIENCE AND WAR 159

firm or Government to investigate and develop
properly.

Then, such was the resistance of orthodox medicine
to modern psychology that the whole crop of war
neuroses were originally lumped together under the
name shell-shock, as if their prime cause were mechanical,
and not mental. If it had not been for the war, not
only would the treatment of peace-time neurotics
still be very backward, but general psychological
theory would not stand where it does, or be able to
make its valuable contributions to the modern outlook
on crime, family life, the problems of sex, or education.

Another example is optical glass. There is a great
demand in war for good lenses for field-glasses, range-
finders, and all sorts of other instruments; and this
demand has led to better lenses for peace-time purposes
too.

Then we have the fact, rather curious at first sight,
that research on gas-masks has led to a number of
industrial improvements. This is because charcoal
has been widely used m them to mop up poisonous
substances out of the air. Charcoal will only do this
when it is what is called " active/' which means
highly porous, so as to contain a great deal of internal
surface, and also chemically clean. The study of the
methods for activating it, and studying how it works
when activated, have led to all sorts of improvements
in dealing with gas mixtures — for instance, in separating
one gas from another, in purifying commercial gas,
and so on.

Then, quite recently an investigation was undertaken
by the Medical Research Council with a view to prevent-
ing evil effects on industrial workers inhaling dust of

160 SCIENCE AND WAR

various kinds. Certain kinds of stone-dust are very
bad for stone-workers, and, if used to prevent explosions
in coal mines, very injurious to the miners. As the
Chemical Defence Experimental Station at Porton is of
necessity largely concerned with the effects of inhaling
unpleasant substances, whether m the form of gases,
vapour, smokes, or dusts, the staff there were able to
give appreciable help to the Medical Research Council
m some researches they undertook on this sub]ect.
(As an example of how easily misinterpretation may
get to work, I may mention that this fact was recently
cited by a very left-wing Labour periodical with the
comment that “ observations on diseases due to the
inhalation of dust m miners have great bearing upon
chemical warfare ” — as if the only reason the Chemical
Defence Station consented to undertake the work was
for war purposes.)

These are a few examples of the benefits which may
accrue for constructive work from science applied to
destructive purposes. We should not belittle them,
or pretend that they do not exist. But do not let us
delude ourselves into thinking that they make more
than a small offset to the damage and loss on the
other side of the balance-sheet. And what is more to
our present point, do not let us imagine that this is
the only way to secure the constructive advance.
If the amount of energy and money that goes into war
research were focussed on to peace-time purposes,
the results would be spectacular. They might not
be the same in detail, but they would undoubtedly
be far more important and far greater in volume than
the present positive by-product of war research.
To take but one example. If one half of the amount

SCIENCE AND WAR 161

annually spent on war research in Great Britain (which
almost certainly is proportionately below the amount
spent by a number of other nations) were devoted to
the problem of how to make the nation healthier,
the results would without question be astounding,
and the next generation would be on a different level
of physique and health from that of any previous
generation m any country.

Research and its effects is less familiar to most
people than concrete activities, so it is permissible to
point the moral by reminding my readers that the
USA. in the two and a half years before the end
of the war spent about four thousand million pounds
in producing war equipment, and that this and the
human effort behind it could have built the Panama
Canal forty times over. (As a further contrast, the
Government expenditure on slum clearance in this
country proposed by the present Minister of Health is
less than one hundred million pounds.)

But I must come back to my main point : the
concern of science with war preparations. I have
taken the attitude that if there is any danger of war
at all, the preparations for it should be scientific, as
otherwise they will merely be wasted. It is difficult
to give many examples of the use of science in this
field, since most of the work is, as a matter of national
policy, kept rigorously secret, and requests to see it
are met with a polite but categorical refusal. It is
true that inspection of the publications of the Patents
Office would reveal the existence of a number of
obviously war-like inventions, but we still should not
know the extent to which the Services were developing
them or letting them lie.

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SCIENCE AND WAR

It is, however, common knowledge that a great
deal of army research has been concentrated on
mechanization, notably with roadless vehicles, and
that a great deal of naval research deals with fuel and
engines to lend increased efficiency and speed to
war vessels, and with metallurgy to increase the range
and life of guns and the resistance of armour-plate.

In gas warfare, developments have been kept
extremely secret, but from the title of the responsible
body — the Chemical Defence Committee — it may be
safely conjectured that the main work has been con-
cerned with improving gas-masks and other means of
protection against gas — a conclusion supported by
general chemical probability

In war aviation, of course, it is again common
knowledge that both the speed and the carrying
capacity of aircraft have been improved to a startling
degree since the war : the speed is so high that it is
nearing the physiological limit of the human organism
(turning corners quickly at speeds of three hundred
miles per hour and over leads to the brief loss of
consciousness known as “ blacking out ”). Each
increase in speed also brings us nearer to the aero-
dynamic limit of aircraft constructed on present
principles ; for with a plane travelling above a certain
speed, the air ceases to give proper buoyancy, and,
becomes compressible, so that the effect on the plane
would be rather like that of thick liquid mud in place
of a nice hard surface for a motor-car. And as for
carrying capacity, in America a year ago I was shown a
new bombing plane which carried not only a central
bomb weighing a ton, but also four other moderate-
sized bombs — and, with it all, was capable of a speed

Keystone.

Developmental research for Avar purposes. Testing an amphibious tank made for the British Army, which is as

much at home in Avater as on land. (See p. 162.)

Aeronautical research. The 24-foot horizontal wind-tunnel at
Farnborough, under construction. In the foreground is the bearing
for the driving fan, in the background a row of <f air-straighteners/'
Some idea of its size may be gained from the broom seen lying on the
floor. {See p. 165.)

Royal Air Force Official — Crown copyright reserved.

SCIENCE AND WAR 163

of nearly two hundred miles per hour. It is also true
that the stability of aircraft and the safety of flying
have been enormously improved — I need only mention
improved parachutes, slotted wings, automatic steering
controls, wireless guidance, gyro compasses, and a
general improvement in construction leading to much
greater stability and much less danger of spin.

Aviation is also the one sphere m which it is possible
to see a good deal of the research done for the fighting
services — and that is because the results of the work
are as important for peace as they are for war. It
should not be forgotten that the Air Ministry has
civil as well as military functions, so that, important
as its research work is for war, it is equally essential
for civil aviation. An obvious example of this is
the autogiro, or windmill plane. The earlier models
of this strange revolutionary new type of aircraft
suffered from certain minor defects; but now that in
the latest model the windmill can be started rotating
from the engine, the rod carrying the windmill can be
tilted at the will of the pilot, and the air-resistance has
been lowered by doing away with wings and ailerons
altogether, these defects have been overcome, and the
research department of the Air Ministry are not only
going to help with research, but propose to build new and
larger models themselves, both for land and sea work.
The new type of small autogiro will fly about as fast
as an ordinary plane of the same weight, and with the
same engine, but its stalling speed is only fifteen
instead of about fifty miles an hour, it only needs about
twenty yards to take off, and only five yards to land,
against a very gentle breeze.

Apart from minor but still important considerations,

164 SCIENCE AND WAR

such as the possibility of hovering stationary over a
site for purposes either of bomb-dropping or of photo-
graphy, and, in seaplane types, the reduction of the
speed, and therefore the danger, in taking off with a
choppy sea running, the new autogiro opens up three
absolutely fundamental new possibilities to aircraft :
it makes it possible to operate with safety in moun-
tainous regions; it makes it possible at least to think
of privately-owned and privately-garaged aircraft in
towns , and it enormously reduces the dangers of fog.
This last is, at the moment at least, perhaps the most
important Fog is the great enemy of air transport,
more dangerous than gales or storms, so long as the
need for a long landing run makes a big landing-ground
and a clear view essential. But if you know you can
land safely in the space of a garden lawn or a roadway,
fog loses half — perhaps nine-tenths — of its terrors.

It will be of the extremest interest to see what
happens in the competition, which is bound to become
acute, between the autogiro and the ordinary aeroplane.
In any case, however, the familiar winged type will
doubtless continue to be used on a large scale for a
long time — there is the momentum of long use and
thorough testing behind it, not to mention that of
the energy and capital tied up in its manufacture.

Much of its present serviceableness is due to patient
research and scientific testing. I saw a good deal of
this at the National Physical Laboratory, and had a
talk with the Director of Research at the Air Ministry
about the similar but larger-scale work going on at
Farnborough.

The most spectacular work is in the wind-tunnels,
both horizontal and vertical. A wind-tunnel is, simply

SCIENCE AND WAR

165

speaking, a tube through which air can be forced to
make a wind of known speed, usually about 100 miles
an hour, but in some special cases rising to 300 miles
an hour and over. In the path of the wind is placed
a small-scale model of the aeroplane to be tested. In
general, the bigger the tunnel, the less difficulty there
is in applying the results obtained on a model to actual
full-size machines Most of the wind-tunnels at the
N.P.L. are less than 10 feet across; but at Farnborough
they have built a 24-foot tunnel, and in America there
is one with a cross-section measuring 60 by 30 feet.

Another way of getting over the difficulty of trans-
lating results on a small-scale model into full-scale
practice is to use compressed air (my readers will have
to take my word for this fact — it would take too long
to explain the reason) . Accordingly, a new tunnel has
been put up at the N.P.L. in which the wind is at a
pressure of 25 atmospheres. This is a very impressive
object to look at, being built of a series of the biggest
rolled forgings ever made, each weighing 24 tons, bolted
together. The steel wall is about inches thick.
Some most ingenious gadgets permit the model to be
manipulated and the records to be read from outside
the tunnel.

By work such as this, striking improvements have
been made, largely in the way of reducing air-resistance,
and therefore, of course, of improving the speed and
range of aircraft, but also in the way of increasing
stability.

As regards stability, however, the most intriguing
research is going on at Farnborough m the new vertical
wind-tunnel, in which a model, actually flying freely,
is supported by an upward current of air. This is

i66

SCIENCE AND WAR

being especially useful in studying the question of
spin, which so far has proved too complex for proper
mathematical analysis. Sometimes, after the models
are flying gaily, their controls are altered by a delayed-
action switch which was set beforehand, so as to study
the effects of sudden movements during flight. Already
the work has led to certain valuable changes in
design.

So I could go on, but I have no space. I would only
like to emphasize again that the great bulk of the
research work of the Air Ministry is, m the present state
of aviation, inevitably devoted to the general improve-
ment of aircraft, in regard to speed, efficiency, range,
carrying capacity, stability, reduction of noise, and
general safety and comfort, and that this cannot help
being equally useful to civil as to military aviation —
as indeed it is intended to be.

But besides the use of science in making war prepara-
tions efficient from the technical military point of view,
it can help to increase their efficiency from another
angle — low cost to the nation. The secrecy of war
research makes it impossible to apply the ordinary
public checks on its efficiency, item by item ; but it is
possible even for a layman to give some opinions on
its organization according to certain general principles.
One of these is that in a research programme, competing
interests should be harmonized so far as possible in a
central organization ; another is that arrangements for
expenditure should be as flexible as possible. Let us
see how these two points apply in war research. In
this field, the needs of land warfare, sea warfare, and
air warfare are in a certain real sense competing
interests so long as there are three separate Depart-

SCIENCE AND WAR 167

ments of State dealing with them. This is not the
place, nor have I the knowledge, to debate whether the
conflict of interests can best be resolved by merging
the three in a single Ministry of Defence — as most people
know, there are many pros and cons to this question
— or by the present methods, which many people find
unsatisfactory, of having a rather exiguous Committee
of Imperial Defence, coupled with periodical meetings
between the Chiefs of Staff of the different Services.
Here we are concerned only with the relation of
research to the problem, and it may be suggested that
the establishment of a War Services Research Council,
covering the whole field of science in its relation to
warfare, and analogous to the D S.I.R. in the field of
industry or the Medical Research Council in the field
of health, would probably be advantageous. At the
moment many people feel that the cost of war research
is low in proportion to the amount of money spent
on the upkeep of possibly obsolescent armaments, but
high in proportion to its ultimate efficiency, and that
proper organization could much increase its money's
worth to the nation.

If such a Council were established, it would not
only be able to take research out of its departmental
pigeon-holes and see it more readily in relation to the
totality of war needs, but — and this brings me to my
second point — it would probably be a better instrument
of financial control. For, to be fully efficient, it should
be organized somewhat after the fashion of the Medical
Research Council, with a lump sum voted to it for
its work, and practically complete control over the
detailed allocations of this sum to this or that kind
of research. This would allow greater flexibility in

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SCIENCE AND WAR

changing over from one project or type of research to
another, if scientific progress demanded it.

To go back to my example of battleships versus
aircraft, the question of relative cost, and therefore
of the total cost of the national premium we pay on
account of war, also enters into this problem — you can
make something like a thousand aeroplanes for the
cost of one battleship. But I see that I am straying
out of the field of science into that of strategy and
policy, and as the amateur strategist is generally
wrong and always a great bore, I will stray no further,
and merely once more emphasize that we need not
only science in research, but also scientific method in
the organization of research.

So far, then, for the first half of my realistic principle
— the application of science in the interest of war
efficiency. Now I come to its second half — the
application of science to make war as unlikely as
possible : science applied to disarmament, if you like,
as opposed to science applied to armament. This has
received comparatively little attention, in spite of its
great practical importance.

So far as I know, two main approaches have been
made towards it, one technical, the other psycho-
logical. The technical approach is best put forward
in Major Lefebure’s book Scientific Disarmament. He
points out that the making of armaments in the large
quantities needed for modern war involves a series of
steps — a development, to use a biological phrase —
which inevitably consumes a certain amount of time,
and that this, further, is a good deal longer than most
people suppose. This time-lag applies not only to cases
in which factories and works are converted from making

SCIENCE AND WAR 169

some peace-time product, but also, though to rather
a lesser extent, to the mere expansion of existing
works. We may call the one conversion lag, the other
expansion lag. In Lefebure’s book numerous examples
are given of conversion lag, for such various products
as shells, poison gas, small arms, and aeroplanes.
In general, we may say that the lag, even under
the urgent stimulus of war needs, varies from a
few months to a year and a half, with an average
of between six months and a year. This is due to
the time consumed in designing new machines and
gauges, in traimng workers m the new processes, and
in the rigorous testing which is necessary at every
stage in the proceedings

The suggestion is therefore made that disarmament
can be scientifically studied as a technical problem,
by accumulating facts about this time-lag for different
kinds of armament; and that it can then be scien-
tifically controlled by having the manufacture of as
many armaments as possible either prohibited or else
regulated to small amounts during peace-time; and
also by insisting, wherever a peace-time product (such
as an aeroplane) can be converted to war purposes,
that its design shall be such as to make the conversion
more difficult — instead of as easy as possible, as is
the avowed aim of certain nations at the moment with
regard to aeroplanes.

Another point which comes up here is the attitude
of scientists themselves to helping in war preparations.
At the moment there is nothing which you could call
a professional attitude of science on the question. At
one end are those who under no circumstances would
help. This is completely logical, provided that they

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SCIENCE AND WAR

would become conscientious objectors in the event of
war At the other end are those of the my-country-
right-or- wrong ” school, who are again completely
logical, provided that they really do believe that
internationalism is always nonsense, and that their
horizon should be bounded by that of their nation.
But the bulk of scientists, being scientists, cannot
help feeling that they have some international duties
to humanity at large, and, being citizens, that they
have some national duties to their country. For the
most part, however, they have not clarified the resultant
conflict. Probably most of them would dislike under-
taking certain kinds of research, such as work on new
forms of poison gas, or on bacterial warfare, in peace-
time, and yet would do just as they were told in
war-time. But a feeling of discomfort, of conflicting
loyalties, remains.

If it were accepted as part of the scientist’s general
code that research work in connection with general
war needs was always legitimate, but that it was
illegitimate to do research on agencies prohibited by
international agreement, or to help in the large-scale
production of armaments in peace-time, the situation
would be cleared up a great deal. That it is not
impossible for a profession to have a professional
attitude of high standard, and on the whole to live
up to it, is shown by medicine. It should not be
impossible for science; and the right attitude on the
part of the scientific profession would be a small but
definite help in preventing war.

By these various means you would ensure that
there was a serious time-lag between the declara-
tion of war and the time when war could be carried

SCIENCE AND WAR 171

out on a really large-scale modern basis, with all its
resources of cubic miles of gas, millions of shells,
thousands of aeroplanes, and the rest And this
would give a real opportunity for passions to cool and
peaceful methods to find a settlement. According to
this view, the best guarantee against sudden aggression
by an over-prepared nation, and the best chance of
averting a prolonged conflict, is to be found in the
agreed reduction or prohibition of the actual large-
scale manufacture of armaments in peace-time, for
this is the one link in the chain where preparations
could not possibly be concealed, and the one pro-
hibition which ensures a big time-lag before really
large-scale warfare could be waged.

This is a real approach to the problem of disarma-
ment, by making a scientific analysis of the process of
armament, instead, as is done in most disarmament
proposals, of thinking in terms of politics and prestige ;
and as such it deserves careful consideration.

The other approach, the psychological one, is more
remote — indeed, more utopian. It is none the less
interesting. Certain psychologists of the modern
school have pointed out that one of the eternal conflicts
imposed upon human nature is that between our
destructive, angry, violent impulses on the one side,
and on the other the demands of family and social
life for restraint and ordered living. The conflict
begins, inevitably, in the nursery — the yelling bab}^,
the child in a tantrums — but its effects may last
throughout hfe. If the impulses to anger and violence
are not properly educated, but merely repressed into
an uneasy imprisonment in the sub-conscious mind,
they will continue to demand an outlet, and will

I]2

SCIENCE AND WAR

succeed in finding one by devious channels. The
results are sometimes surprising, as when you find
certain brands of pacifists and anti-vivisectionists, who
presumably should be of a kindly disposition, publicly
asking for the most unpleasant penalties and punish-
ments to be inflicted on their opponents.

But a more usual solution for the conflict is in the
framework of patriotism — whether the patriotism of a
class, a political party, a race, or a nation — and the
repressed impulses to violence find their outlet in
abusing or attacking the other fellow : the one who
happens to belong to a different class, party, race, or
nation.

The psychologist's contention is that so long as
this fund of repressed destructive impulse exists among
a large section of the population, it will continue to
demand an outlet; and if nationalism makes war
the obvious outlet, the danger of war is thereby in-
creased. They further contend that our destructive
impulses need not be repressed in this crude way, with
such unfortunate results; and that if children were
differently brought up, with less repressive discipline,
more outlets for self-expression, our destructive urges
would be properly harnessed with the rest of the team
of human impulses, and the fund of repressed and
therefore dangerous emotion would be enormously
reduced. In other words, scientific anti-war measures
should begin in the nursery and the school.

There may be a good deal of speculation mixed up
in this argument, but there is undoubtedly some element
of truth; equally undoubtedly, there is no research
being undertaken on the subject. One would think
that if the governments of the world were thinking of

SCIENCE AND WAR

173

disarmament in the same hard-headed (but open-
handed) way as they think about armament, they
would have set on foot a very considerable amount of
scientific research into the causes of war in general,
the risks of war in the modern world, and the measures
to be adopted for reducing these risks But apart
from a few inquiries on certain technical aspects of
armament production, nothing, so far as I am aware,
has been done, either at Geneva or by separate nations.
The result is to make disarmament discussion about as
useless as would be a discussion on public health by
those ignorant of physiology, or on eugenics by a body
of persons unacquainted with the laws of heredity.

However, this brings me to another point. The
psychologists may be right in supposing that the
emotional gunpowder, so to speak, for the explosion of
war, is generated by conflict and repression, but we
must not forget that there is a large and increasing
school of thought which sees in economic forces the
essential causes of war. At the moment, they say,
the combination of the profit motive in business with
nationalist ideas in politics has imposed on the world
an economic nationalism which must, in their view,
lead to war if it is not checked or altered.

Now, this view is by no means inconsistent with the
view put forward by the psychologists The fund
of emotional explosive may exist and may be very
dangerous ; but it could not lead to war in the ordinary
sense, unless the explosion was canalized, so to speak,
along nationalist channels. In a different type of
political world you could still have certain kinds of
war — class wars, police wars against recalcitrant tribes,
and so on — but not the national type of war, which

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SCIENCE AND WAR

involves setting m the field the maximum number
of combatants armed with weapons of the maximum
degree of effectiveness

So here we are, back, as m previous chapters, in the
economic and political sphere Here again, science by
itself cannot, by its very nature, take us the whole
way to a solution. It can gradually change the
situation — for instance, as suggested by such students
of strategy as Liddell Hart, the development of air
warfare may have introduced such new conditions that
mass trench-warfare of the type made familiar by the
last war would never again come into existence —
because the process of mass mobilization would afford
such targets to bombing aircraft that it could never
be completed, and m the regions behind the war
frontier an alarming state of chaos would result. If
so, war may become more professional again, though
on a new plane of scientific and technical efficiency, and
aimed as much at civilians and at economic objectives
as at the enemy’s armed forces. Or, indeed, event-
ually it might well come to pass that scientific devices
will make warfare so intensely horrible as to bring
about an overwhelming pressure towards peace and
disarmament. Opinions differ as to whether war will
paralyse itself or commit suicide, or if it will manage
to destroy civilization first. Meanwhile, however,
science can only operate in the framework of existing
conditions.

But if existing conditions — in this case economic
nationalism — inevitably head us towards war, what
then? The answer, I take it, is to try to apply the
scientific spirit to the study of this question too. It
is very far from easy, as so many factors are involved.

SCIENCE AND WAR

175

and also so many feelings and so many vested interests ;
but it is at least possible to attempt a dispassionate
survey. And if that survey shows that the economic
nationalism of sovereign states makes war easier, the
remedy would seem to be clear — to take steps to
subordinate certain of the sovereign rights of nationalist
states to international authority. The most obvious
case is in the air. With an international system of
civil aviation, and restriction or prohibition of the
manufacture of aeroplanes for war, save for the purposes
of an international air police, both the risk of war and
its possible horrors would be cut in half at one stroke.
For this, however, a surrender by national states of
certain of their existing rights would be necessary.

Other authorities think that internationalization of
civil flying would be too difficult, and would prefer
the establishment of a general super-national or
international police force. That too would, of course,
demand some surrender of sovereign rights by nations.
This, indeed, is the logic of the case — either keep your
sovereign rights and your nationalist patriotism intact
and live in a condition of maximum insecurity and
risk of war, or increase your security and cut down
your war risk at the cost of some of these sovereign
rights.

Thus our conclusion is that science can enter into
the problem of disarmament; but that to exert any
considerable effect it must wait upon change m political
outlook and practice.

CHAPTER X

MAN AND SOCIETY

M AN and Society — I chose the title for want of a
better one. In this chapter I want to deal with
the human factor in affairs and what science is or is not
doing about this. I shall begin with something quite
straightforward — the work being done in certain quarters
to prevent accidents and reduce industrial disease among
workers. This leads on naturally to some discussion of
what is generally called industrial psychology — dis-
covering how work may be made both less fatiguing
and more efficient (the efficiency being measured in
relation to the worker as well as to the employer) and
studying questions such as proneness to accident.

This, again, leads on to the problems of vocational
guidance — finding the right kind of job for a person;
and vocational selection — finding the right kind of
person for a job. In many cases, unfitness, however
estimated, turns out to be due to some psychological
trouble, so the next step is to some consideration of
psychology and what it is doing.

Modern psychology is a very young science. Thanks
primarily to the genius of Freud, it enables us to see
ourselves in a new perspective, with our conscious
thoughts and beliefs inevitably coloured by our sub-
conscious mind and the repressed impulses in it. By
realizing this fact and attempting to discount it, we

176

From New Methods of Research in Aeronautics , by H. E. Wimperis.
By courtesy of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

The results of experimental testing : a type of special hard h
recommended by the Safety in Mines Research Board to prote
imners from falls of roof. This miner had his life saved by Ms ha

From the Safety m Mines Research Board Eleventh Annual Report.
By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

MAN AND SOCIETY

1 77

arrive at a quite new outlook in regard to education, to
penal reform, to family relationships, to mental disease,
and many other fields But in all these fields it is not
possible to think only m terms of individual psychology.
So we are led on to the study of social psychology —
the way in which the structure of society influences our
minds, usually without our being aware of the fact.
Here all kinds of most important questions crop up
which have as yet hardly been tackled seriously, such
as the good side of propaganda, the kindling of large-
scale group enthusiasms for other than war or party
purposes, and so on

In fact, the more we look at the matter, the more we
see that in every department of life psychological
study and approach could be of the utmost importance ;
yet the number of professional psychologists in the
country is ridiculously low compared to that of trained
workers in any other big branch of science, and in
general psychology is sadly neglected.

Perhaps the most important single fact which comes
out of psychological study is this — that human nature
is not unchangeable, as so many people believe, but,
on the contrary, is plastic within very wide limits.

But psychology, individual or social, will only take
us a certain distance. We can also apply science to
the general study of society as an organism ; that is
sociology. I shall not be able here to say much about
sociology, except to point out that if we want to
control the development of society in an efficient,
orderly way, we had better trust to science instead
of to so-called common-sense opinion, blind economic
forces, politics, or revolutions.

Finally, there is another line I want to pursue. One
N

MAN AND SOCIETY

17S

of the things that psychological testing brings out is
the amount of difference between individuals When
we follow this up, we find that a great many of these
differences are inherent, inborn. And this leads on
naturally to the question of eugenics, by means of
which we may eventually hope to change the limits now
set to human nature. So here we end with the idea
of man's control, through science, not of the materials
and forces around him, but of his own nature and its
expression. That is a great deal of ground to cover
m a single chapter, so I shall have to be brief with
each of my subjects.

First, then, the welfare of the worker. It is worth
remembering that the Factory Acts have just celebrated
their centenary, and that this hundred years of legis-
lation, accompanied by the supervision of Government
Factory Inspectors, has done an enormous amount to
improve conditions of work and do away with the old
shameful state of affairs in which there was no regulation
of hours, no standard rates of wages, no restriction as
to sex or age of workers, when even small children
worked in factories, sometimes for twelve hours a day.

But all this, though extremely valuable, has meant
for the most part the correction of obvious abuses, and
science has not been called in to any great extent. One
very special institution, however, which I visited is
concerned quite definitely to use science in order to
improve the conditions of one particular set of workers
— the coal-miners This is the Safety in Mines Re-
search Board, with its main laboratory at Sheffield,
and another, where large-scale work goes on, out at
Buxton. Though the main laboratory is among the
buildings of Sheffield University, the Board is quite

MAN AND SOCIETY

179

independent, and is supported out of the Miners’
Welfare Fund, which is raised by a levy of a penny a ton
on all the coal mined in this country . 1 Do not imagine,
however, that all the research on safety and health
in mines is done here . a good deal is carried out in the
Mining Departments of various Universities, one of
which I also visited, at Birmingham.

Let me give a few examples of the sort of work that is
going on. At Sheffield I saw a Davy safety lamp of the
ordinary pattern, but bigger and giving out ten times
as much light; and at Birmingham a new electric
safety-lamp for roof lighting — a most ingenious bit of
electrical engineering designed to secure small size,
and to prevent all danger of a spark, with its possibility
of an explosion, if anything goes wrong. These new
lamps are both attempts to get rid of that horrid
disease, miner’s nystagmus, which involves the failure
of the central region of the eye, and affects a large
proportion of the men at the coal face. As it is
generally accompanied by headaches and depression,
it is pretty serious Research has shown it to be due
entirely to insufficient light; and in a few years we
ought to see the last of it.

Then there was the discovery made by the head of the
department at Birmingham, that miner’s cramp, an-
other unpleasant disease of coal-mming, was due to
loss of salt. Miners sweat a great deal with their hard
work m a hot atmosphere, and when you sweat, salt
comes out of your blood as well as water, until, if
you sweat too much, the salt in your blood falls to a
danger point and muscular cramps are the result.

1 Since this was written, Parliament has unfortunately seen
seen fit to reduce the levy to Id. per ton.

i8o

MAN AND SOCIETY

Once this chain of causes had been discovered, the
remedy was obvious — to drink salty water instead of
ordinary water — and also efficacious.

Then a great deal of work is being done at Sheffield
on the prevention of explosions — for instance, funda-
mental studies of what really happens in a flame and
in the rapidly travelling flame we call an explosion.
These are building up almost a new little branch of
pure science, and also showing the way to introduce
new safety measures — such as coating explosive
cartridges with sodium bicarbonate, which makes a
protective blanket at the moment of firing for just long
enough to prevent the charge starting an explosion
even if firedamp is around ; or rigging up gadgets which
utilize the heat of an explosion once it has started, to
operate a dust exploder which throws up a barrage
of fine dust and so stops the explosion from travelling
further. Much research is also being carried out on the
best types of dust to use in the ordinary way for
preventing the spread of explosions, on the prevention
of falls of roof, on detonators for firedamp, and many
other problems.

Then there is the interesting research being done by
the Government, through the Industrial Health Re-
search Board under the Medical Research Council. One
of their most interesting lines of study concerns what is
called occupational neurosis — neurasthenia, worry, ner-
vous breakdown, and so on, caused by the conditions of
work. This is extending the idea of industrial disease
to diseases of the mind. It is going to be very import-
ant from the point of view of better health for the
workers, and also from that of the employer in reducing
wasteful labour turnover and absence through sickness.

Part of the same gallery as that shown in the preceding illustration, after an experimental explosion,
which showed that serious explosions that travelled long distances could arise from coal dust alone
without gas. ( See p. 180.)

From Safety in Coal Mines : Some Problems of Research, issued by the Safety in Mines Research Board.
By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

MAN AND SOCIETY

181

Then there are important studies on the effect of noise
on workers' comfort and output. (In passing, it is
interesting to find how many different institutions are
separately studying the noise problem. If research
were organized primarily from the angle of the worker,
or from that of the consumer, in the shape of the
general public, instead of primarily from that of the
producer, we would expect to find a centralized Noise
Research Station instead of these sporadic bits of work.)

Lighting, heating, ventilation, dust, vibration — these
are other questions being studied along similar lines,
and there are special researches like those into the
effects of deep diving on the physiology of the diver.

Some of the work is farmed out — for instance, to
the Psychology Laboratory m Manchester University,
which I visited earlier. This is one of the few Uni-
versity Departments of Psychology where full-scale
tests on industrial workers under industrial conditions
can be carried out.

Industrial health links on closely with what is gener-
ally called Industrial Psychology. This, however, is
something broader. It, too, is dealing with the human
factor in industry, but instead of dealing primarily
with industrial disease and the prevention of ill health,
it sets itself the more positive task of finding out how to
promote greater efficiency in all ways other than techni-
cal improvement of machinery and processes. To do
this, it all the time stresses the necessity of not think-
ing of work in purely mechanical terms, but in terms
of a co-operation between a machine and a human
organism. The machine works mechanically; the
human organism does not, but has its own quite differ-
ent way of working, its own feelings, its fears and its

182

MAN AND SOCIETY

ideals, which also must be studied if the co-operation
is to be fruitful. Considering the importance of the
field, it is really absurd that there are only two institu-
tions m the country which are concerned with it,
and only one exclusively concerned ; and that this latter
is a private body which, though it receives some grants
for pure research, must go into commerce and attempt
to make money m order to carry on a full programme.
One of the two institutions is the Industrial Health
Research Board, some of the work of which I have just
been describing. The other, on a private basis, is the
National Institute of Industrial Psychology m Aldwych.
It is interesting to find that the work of the two bodies
is often complementary. For instance, one piece of re-
search undertaken by the Psychology Department at
Manchester for the I.H.R.B. showed that training in one
kmd of simple manual work was not necessarily of the
least help in learning dexterity in other manual opera-
tions. Then, however, another piece of research under-
taken at the National Institute made it clear that while
mere practice in dexterity had no effect, real training
in the ideas and principles underlying dexterity does
definitely help in learning a fairly wide range of other
manual operations. These results obviously have a
bearing on the methods of training to be adopted in
factories.

I went over the National Institute, and must try to
describe a few examples of its work, to give an idea of
what it is aiming at. One big research here is concerned
with the psychological factors entering into motor-
driving. You sit in a model of a driving-seat, press a
button, and suddenly the picture of a road begins to
unroll before you on a screen. You have to steer as

MAN AND SOCIETY 183

you would if actually driving a car, and a record of the
track you take is automatically recorded on a map of
the route. I at first thought the picture was a pro-
jected film, but really it is produced by a delightfully
Heath Robinson (though efficient) gadget — an actual
model of a road with hedges, corners, crossings and so
on, which rotates all the time; a stationary light in
the middle projects the picture on to the screen. You
can make the course more difficult by putting model
road-up signs, pedestrians, or other obstacles on to it.

Another test, carried out m another room, is designed
to discover your capacities for concentration. While
you are engaged on a test which demands looking in
one direction, a miniature film is projected on to a
screen, tantalizmgly just within your range of direct
vision. The ratio of your performances with and with-
out the film gives some measure of your liability to be
distracted by incidents on the road while driving.
There were a number of other tests, which made me
feel that the director of the Institute was probably
right when he claimed that the problem of the roads
was more than half psychological, and that it would
be an excellent thing if the Ministry of Transport were
to have a few good psychologists on its staff.

The Institute's commercial work includes the ad-
vising of firms as to improvements which could be made
in lay-out, lighting, measures for saving waste of move-
ments or of energy by operatives in carrying out a
process, and so on. Such work has often been criti-
cized as being only in the employers' interest and being
used merely to speed up output to the limit of the
worker's physiological capacities. That it could be so
abused is obvious, but it is also obvious that if so

184

MAN AND SOCIETY

abused it will eventually defeat its own aims. The
founder of motion-study methods, the American
engineer Taylor, did introduce a number of harsh
features into the system he devised However, this
was precisely because he was an engineer, not a psycho-
logist, and did not take the men's psychological re-
actions sufficiently into consideration — with the result
that his schemes m their original form would not work.

If properly carried out, work of this sort will not only
pay the employer, but will also help the employees by
reducing the fatigue of their jobs, and often by making
it possible for them to earn more

Let me give two exceedingly simple examples. The
Institute was called m to advise about some work
involving the sorting of black-currants The investigator
found that the currants were handed out to the girls
in one-stone lots, and that this amount was so big
that it had a discouraging effect. When the size of
the lot was reduced to half a stone, the girls could
see the end of the particular job, so to speak, and the
result was a doubling of output, together with bigger
earnings, and a greater feeling of satisfaction among
the girls

Then general research has shown the value of rhythm
in reducing the fatigue and monotony of purely repetitive
work of a very simple sort. When this was tried out
with workers loading a mechanical conveyer, it was
found that putting the boxes on in groups, several at
a time quickly, with pauses between, increased the
speed of loading and yet reduced the worker's feeling
of fatigue. This is an excellent illustration of the
value of psychology in industry. The common-sense
view was that regular timing would give the best

MAN AND SOCIETY 185

results : the industrial psychologist insists on a bio-
logical view which takes into account the facts of
human make-up as well as the view of common-sense,
which happens to be based on a mechanical outlook.

By the way, I saw one striking example last spring
in Holland of the effect of good working conditions
on workpeople, m the beautiful new factory, built
largely of steel and glass, a triumph of functionalist
architecture, recently put up by the cocoa and coffee
firm of Van Nelie. When they moved out from their
old quarters, a dark antiquated building m the heart of
Rotterdam, they had all their operatives weighed. A
year later they were weighed again. Not one had lost
weight; the average gam was over 4 lbs., and, so one
of the directors told me, the men had a different, more
contented look and were more efficient.

The ideal state of affairs would be one in which
such schemes should be undertaken compulsorily, by
Government institutions, with advisers from among
employers, workers, and managerial staff. Meanwhile
the National Institute and the Industrial Health
Research Board are doing useful pioneer work.

But in some ways the most interesting things the
Institute is doing concern vocational guidance and
vocational selection. They look into the cases of
boys and girls leaving school, and provide guidance
as to the type of job they ought to go into. The kind
of work may be entirely different from what the
children themselves say they want to do, or from what
their parents suggest.

An experiment along these lines was recently carried
out in conjunction with the education authorities in
Birmingham. Half of a group of children were advised

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MAN AND SOCIETY

m the ordinary way at the Conferences on choice of
employment attached to the school; the other half
were, in addition, tested by specially tramed workers.
The tests concerned manual dexterity, mechanical
ability, clerical ability, performance tests with concrete
problems, and ordinary intelligence tests. Furthermore,
special temperament charts were constructed for each
child, to include estimates of such qualities as initiative,
perseverance, and so on. The type of jobs recommended
varied from clerical posts to routine factory work, from
page-boy to skilled apprentice.

The results as checked by a follow-up investigation
were pretty conclusive. The children who had been
specially tested and had followed the tester's advice
proved to have been much the most satisfactorily
placed, as judged by the length of time the first job
was held, by the proportion who continued in the same
job throughout the period, by the opinion of the
employers, and by the opinion of the children them-
selves The tested children who took jobs against the
tester's advice were the least satisfactorily placed,
with the untested children intermediate.

It is interesting to find that unsatisfactory results
arise not only from round pegs m square holes — such
as workers in clerical posts whose real gift is manual
dexterity : not only from small pegs in big holes —
children taking on jobs beyond their real powers :
but also from big pegs in small holes — workers who get
discontented because their job does not give scope for
their abilities or their initiative.

The same sort of tests, of course, can be applied from
the employer's point of view, to select the best-suited
from among a number of applicants for a particular

MAN AND SOCIETY 1S7

job. A good deal of this is being done by the Institute,
and also by the Industrial Health Research Board,
who have, for instance, been quite successful m pro-
phesying the suitability of candidates for driving tanks
in the Tank Corps : similar work is going on as regards
tests for suitability for Army signallers, aviators, and
so on.

These methods are still in their infancy, but it seems
certain that m them we have a most valuable addition
to the ordinary methods of judging candidates by
examination results or on a hasty interview, and that
as they are improved and more widely adopted, the
country will profit a great deal from the reduction of
labour turnover, from general increase m efficiency,
and, most of all in the long run, from the greater
contentment and satisfaction which come from
havmg work m accordance with your aptitudes and
abilities instead of in conflict with them. It may also
be suggested that m the Planned State of the future
there will be tests for employers as well as for
employed. As it is, doctors and lawyers and other
professional men have to pass stiff examinations
before being admitted to practise their profession ,
and m the Army and the Navy, examinations recur
periodically during an officer’s career. We may expect
that the business man of the future will have to face
\he same sort of ordeal, with some psychological tests
thrown in.

Vocational guidance brings the industrial psycho-
logist into contact with problems of family life.
It is surprising how often it turns out that a boy’s
parents have no views as to what he should become,
or, when they do have views, how often these are at

i8 8

MAN AND SOCIETY

variance with the real bent of the boy's character and
aptitude. And in quite a number of cases a conflict
is revealed It may be a conflict with obvious motives,
as when the parents want a child to go into a poor
sort of job because it will bring m money at once, and
the child wants something better , or the motives may
be deep below the surface, and the conflict date back
to infancy and be due to such causes as obscure
jealousy between father and son, accentuated maybe
by over-fondness on the part of the mother.

With this sort of problem industrial psychology
does not attempt to deal; but there are agencies for
dealing with it, some on a very large scale. The
London County Council used to have an official holding
the special post of Psj^chologist. He was familiar to
wireless listeners as Dr. Cyril Burt. One of his varied
jobs was to study the children who were backward
at school, and among these the children whose back-
wardness depended on neurosis made a well-marked
type. Now Dr. Burt has become Professor in London
University the L.C.C. have not filled the post, but
carry on some of the work by sending such children
to the Child Guidance Clinic in Islington, or the
Institute of Medical Psychology in Bloomsbury.

The results are often startling. A great many children,
it turns out, are not only backward in work and largely
wasting their time at school, but also unhappy and
headed towards graver troubles, such as neurosis,
in the years to come, just because they are in a mental
tangle. Not only this, but the mental tangle can often
be set straight, or at least straighter, by taking quite
simple steps in consultation with the child’s parents
and teachers.

ndus trial psychology : a test for weavers. The girl has to thread a wire through a series of eyelets;
this involves making movements like those employed in picking up a dropped thread. (See p. 182.)

Industrial psychology: a test for divided attention. The boy
being tested is a would-be engineering apprentice. He has to tap
with one hand while inserting pegs in a board with the other. From
time to time the examiner switches on the light, when the candidate
must stop pegging and switch it off. His reactions are timed
throughout. ( See p. 186.)

By courtesy of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology.

MAN AND SOCIETY

189

We all want to remedy physical deformity and
stunted growth. Mental deformity and stunted mental
growth are in many ways more serious— only they do
not strike us so forcibly, because we cannot see them
Now that psychology is helping us to realize their
extent we ought to take steps to have Child Guidance
Clinics all over the country

This is, I think, the place to put in a word about
' the fundamentally new ideas to which the rapid develop-
ment of psychological science is leading us. These
ideas meet with a great deal of opposition, partly
because they are at variance with traditional views
of religion, or morality, or political philosophy, but
perhaps still more because they inevitably come up
against deep-rooted resistances, all the stronger for
being irrational, and indeed often unconscious, in the
mind of the average man and woman.

I suppose almost all scientists, however much they
might disagree with Freud in respect of detail or even
principle, would unite in saying that he has had more
influence than any other man on the recent rapid
growth of psychology. His great contributions to the
science are, first, that he has insisted on a dynamic view
of human behaviour and mental life, as the resultants
of a series of urges or drives, harnessed to a series of
goals or aims, which push and pull the human being
in various directions. Reason is not an impelling
force, and all too rarely a guiding hand : in the majority
of cases it is just engaged in finding reasons — more
or less rational excuses, if you like — for the actions
to which we find ourselves impelled. Secondly,
Freud, more than anyone else, has pointed out the
importance of the unconscious or subconscious mind.

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MAN AND SOCIETY

In particular, he has shown how impulses may be
repressed into the unconscious, and yet may go on
exerting their influence. In the developing human
mind, a series of conflicts inevitably takes place —
between selfish and altruistic urges, between the
impulses to senseless violence and the demands of
ordered living, between the crude sex impulse and the
accepted standards of society This series of conflicts,
also inevitably, begins in infancy; and, especially in
early life, conflicts may be solved by what is technically
called repression, in which impulses which have
painful consequences are sat upon and squashed — •
thrust altogether out of conscious life But — -and this
is the point — they are still alive and active m their
imprisonment, and manage to express themselves m
all sorts of roundabout ways, which accounts for a
great deal of the curious behaviour of you and me and
our fellow human beings — behaviour that undoubtedly
would seem very odd and irrational to a scientist
from another planet.

Let me give one or two examples. Repressed impulses
to anger and violence may ally themselves with the
repressing forces of the mind, and make them harsh
and cruel. This may show itself m the form of an
over-strict conscience, or, more often, in the form of a
moral attitude which makes you very indignant —
about other people's lapses. The indignation may
be specially reserved for lapses in the particular sphere
of conduct where you yourself have practised the
most thorough repression; this is very common as
regards sex matters. Or it may be reserved for the
sphere about which you happen to harbour a strong
and often unconscious fear; this is well seen in the

MAN AND SOCIETY 191

violent attitude of property-owners to petty theft by
members of what they like to call “ the lower orders/'
Undue sense of sm, inferiority complex, persecution
mania, imaginary invalidism, and exaggerated lust
of power — these and many other manifestations of
human nature can also be traced back to repressions
arising out of conflict.

Then, partly from this side of psychology, partly
from others, comes the assurance that human tempera-
ment and attitude can be modified much more than
is usually supposed The old dictum “ you cannot
change human nature ” has lost a great deal of its
meaning. It is true that you cannot change it beyond
the limits appointed by heredity — but those limits are
extremely wide. You can change the growth of a tree
in your garden — stunt it, make it leaf, encourage its
growth and general leafiness, make it fruit heavily,
train it on an espalier, and so on ; so the growth of
the mind can be changed, and changed more radically
than that of a tree. What is really being changed,
of course, is not human nature itself, but its expression.
However, what people have thought was human nature
has been only a particular, rather usual, rather crudely-
organized set of its expressions. Psychology is only at
the beginning of things as far as controlling the growth
of human nature is concerned ; but it sees that it can
be done.

Apparently, perhaps, opposed to this idea, but really
complementary to it, is the realization of the amount
of innate differences between individuals. The more
psychology has been used in practice, the more evidence
it has found of individual differences. In education,
intelligence tests show the existence of very big differ-

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MAN AND SOCIETY

ences in native intelligence among children. In
industrial psychology, vocational tests reveal equally
great differences, in temperament, m special bent
such as mechanical, artistic, or literary aptitude,
even m basic qualities such as quick reaction, or the
discriminating powers of eye and ear in seeing and
hearing. Similarly, other tests reveal that some people
are what is called " accident-prone ” — their make-up
is such that they are much more likely to be involved
in accidents than the average. Of course, the proneness
of a lorry driver to motor accidents, of a machine
operative to have trouble with machinery, or of a
waitress to drop trays, are not all due to identical
causes : the important thing is that accident-proneness
exists. This links up with a modern tendency of
medicine, which is finding marked innate differences
in regard to predisposition to disease; and with the
whole science of heredity, which makes it clear that
you must expect marked innate differences to occur
among the population in regard to every conceivable
characteristic.

Thus psychology is showing us the surprising degree
of inherent differences between different individual
human minds; it is also showing how wide are the
limits within which any given human mind can be
moulded during its growth ; and, finally, it is showing
that one of the commonest incidents during the growth
of minds is a conflict of impulses, with final repression
of one set into the unconscious, where it continues
to influence our conscious thoughts and feelings
without our realizing it — with the result, in fact, that
our knowledge -about our own minds and motives is
both incomplete and incorrect, and that the more

MAN AND SOCIETY 193

strongly we feel about an opinion, the more likely
it is that we are holding it on irrational grounds

Let us see how all this applies to social problems.
First there is the law. Here I had the opportunity
of an interesting talk with Mr. Hamblin Smith, who
was a prison doctor for over thirty years, and has
consistently tried to apply psychological principles to
the cases he has been called on to deal with. He
confirmed the belief I had already gamed from various
books, that psychology can be a valuable ally not
only to the law, but also to the prisoner and to society
at large. There are quite a number of types of cases
that regularly come up m police-courts which are better
dealt with by psychology than by punishment. To
take one example, many petty thefts by young people
have no motive that seems adequate Psychological
study shows that many of these are the result of the
impulses of self-expression being persistently frustrated,
until they seek an outlet m theft, either by way of a
symbolic revenge upon society, or to gratify some
thwarted desire for vanity or possession. Such cases
can often be put right by adjustment m home life or
living conditions, while imprisonment would only
have aggravated them. Various sex offences can also
best be dealt with in this sort of way.

In general, courts should have professional psycholo-
gists attached to them. They alone are qualified by
their training to shed light on the deeper sources of
the motives of accused persons. In most courts at
present, either psychology is not called in at all, or it
is called in in the form of expert witnesses on the two
sides. But psychology is too important for this :
like law, it should be in the service of justice alone,
o

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MAN AND SOCIETY

The relation of psychology to justice is rather like that
of medicine to education : when universal education
was started m this country, it was soon found that
defective health and nutrition interfered with education,
and the school medical service was started as an in-
tegral part of the educational system, with admirable
results. So with justice — you cannot be sure of being
just if you are dealing with the psychologically sick
or deficient : you need a law psychology service as an
integral part of the legal system.

However, even if there were a psychologist in every
court m the country, they could not do much without
a reform in our penal system. For much of this, too,
is based on a pre-scientific attitude of mind. Much
of the law, like many of the ideas of the general public,
is still conceived in terms of punishment, instead of
the ultimate good of society or of the offender. And
in this attitude society, as I pointed out in discussing
the idea of conflict introduced by Freud, is really
giving outlet to its repressed impulses to violence and
its hidden fears, and is using the man or woman who
happens to have transgressed the law as a scapegoat
on which these may be vented with gusto and a good
conscience. Our own unconscious sense of guilt is
eased by punishment inflicted on the law-breaker.

There is undoubtedly room for punishment in the
treatment of law-breakers; but there is also room —
and, indeed, crying need — for what we have not got at
all — a system of detention aimed at cure, in which the
offender is looked on as diseased, instead of, or at least
as well as, criminal or immoral, and psychotherapy,
among other agencies, is used to cure him and send
him back as a fit member of society. This would in

MAN AND SOCIETY 195

the long run effect a great saving of money, as well as
of other less tangible things like human aspirations and
human happiness. In this respect, by the way, Soviet
Russia is a good deal in advance of our own country.

Besides our legal system, our whole attitude to sex
could do with an overhaul in the light of psychological
knowledge. But that will prove more difficult; for,
since the sex impulse is not only intensely powerful,
but, under present conditions, usually the most forcibly
repressed, the unconscious forces at work are most
powerful, the unconscious resistances are more difficult
to overcome, the tendency to be unforgiving about
other people's offences in the field stronger.

Here we have arrived m the field of social psychology.
I had something to say about this in the previous
chapter, in relation to the causes of war. One could,
indeed, write a whole series of chapters on the subject,
for every social problem has its psychological side;
but, as my space is not unlimited, I shall have to
confine myself to one or two special points. For
instance, I would like to stress the need for more
psychology in the art and business of government.
Government is inevitably becoming more of a tech-
nical affair, concerned with increasingly complicated
problems, which are changing all the time. Both the
complication and the speed of change are much greater
than in any previous period of history. In the circum-
stances, government cannot be successful unless it
either has great power and is very autocratic, or
unless it gets the understanding and interest of the
population it is governing. Even the autocratic
governments of to-day depend a great deal on propa-
ganda and mass-suggestion, though these may be

MAN AND SOCIETY

196

rather crude — witness Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany,
It is vital for them to have propaganda which is psycho-
logically along the right lines. Germany has recognized
this by establishing a Ministry of Press and Propaganda.

In this country we are still carrying on with more
democratic methods. Hence it is even more important to
ensure that the mass of the people should be interested
in what the government is after, and understand its
problems and its policies sufficiently to feel real
enthusiasm for its main aims. Already we have
sporadic examples to show that this truth is recog-
nized — such as the campaign of enlightenment that
has recently been carried out on the subject of slums,
or the excellent work that was done in explaining
the national advantages of last year's Conversion
Loan. But the principle wants to be recognized
in every department. Crude propaganda is not
good enough : people like to be taken into the con-
fidence of the powers that be. To accomplish this
properly, a new art is needed — propaganda in the
good sense, information and persuasion, publicity that
is not mere advertising : the Government and all its
departments ought to realize that its relations with
the public are a very important branch of its activities.
Perhaps public relations is the best phrase. Already
the Post Office has made a beginning by appointing a
Public Relations Officer, but there should be a whole
Department of Public Relations, which, of course,
would have to base its activities on applied psychology.
But I must not launch out into speculations about the
future. I would only ask my readers to think what
could be achieved in regard to public health, the
popular understanding of financial proposals, cam-

MAN AND SOCIETY 197

paigns against noise or against smoke, campaigns for
town-planning or for the preservation of the country-
side, and a thousand and one other matters of national
importance.

But even this would be only a beginning. I wonder
if my readers will agree with me when I say that the
greatest single trouble of this country to-day, outside
the pressing economic sphere, is the lack of outlets
for collective enthusiasm, collective beliefs, collective
idealism? — a lack which has become especially acute
with the decay of orthodox religion as a vital popular
force ? Perhaps I should say the lack of certain kinds
of good outlets : there are plenty of outlets good in
their way, but insufficient in others, like sport, and
other outlets which are more embracing but bad, like
class-spirit or narrow nationalist patriotism. Human
nature, as at present organized, feels the lack of such
outlets, and in their absence makes them for itself,
often in unsatisfactory form — witness the crudeness
and violence mixed up with the idealism and the
enthusiasm in German Fascism. It would take too
long to discuss here what sort of outlets and aims are
desirable, and how they could be brought into being.
But whatever the answer, it is clear that both technical
advice from psychological science, and the scientific
spirit in the shape of careful planning, will be needed
to avoid the dangers that arise from idealisms kindled
for a wrong or unsatisfactory end, or allowed to stamp
out variety and freedom of thought by their very
enthusiasm.

Collective enthusiasms and beliefs are to the com-
munity very much what private enthusiasms and
beliefs are to the individual. I am sure that sweeping

MAN AND SOCIETY

198

statement can have a lot of holes picked m it ; but it is
roughly true — and brings us face to face with the idea
that the community is m a real sense an organism,
with laws of its own, capable of scientific study like
any other phenomenon. That study results in the
science of sociology — still very much in its infancy,
but capable of enormous development. I heard Sir
Josiah Stamp, at the British Association last year,
make a strong appeal for guiding as many as possible
of the best scientific brains of the young generation
away from the sciences of matter — physics and
chemistry — and into the sciences of life — biology,
psychology, and sociology. He was quite right : it
is m the fields with which these deal that the danger-
point lies now. We have got a great deal of control
— quite enough to get on with for the time being —
over lifeless nature : we have practically no control
over human nature, and over the monsters we have
unconsciously created, or at least allowed to grow up
unchecked, in the shape of economic systems, unin-
telligent moralities, nationalist sovereign states, mass
ignorance, and mass hysteria.

Let me try in conclusion to indicate quite briefly
some of the more important conclusions to which we
are led by a scientific study of man and society.

To take but two examples. One is the sweeping
conclusion, devastating to many timid minds, that no
absolute standards exist, m morality, truth, art, or any-
thing else : they all are relative. This is most simply
seen in the field of morality, where the idea of what is
right and wrong does actually, and must inevitably,
change with change in the form and outlook of society.

We have mistaken the abstract for the absolute.

MAN AND SOCIETY 199

There is an abstract idea of Good — but it has no
content : the content of the idea, and therefore of
morality, is and must always be relative. In other
words, we have to build the system of morality which
is the best possible in the present condition of the
world, just as we have to organize the best possible
system of education or public health. It is no good
trying to shift our responsibility on to God, or our
ancestors, or a philosophical Absolute : “ Heaven helps
those who help themselves ” is as true here as in any
other department of life.

The other point I would like to emphasize is that we
are influenced by our social environment to an extent
that most of us do not realize, and would perhaps be
horrified at if we did realize it. Even if the influence
takes the form of a reaction against the existing order,
instead of acquiescence in it, it is none the less real
and compelling. That has two lessons — in the first
place, one aim of education should be to teach people
to discount the unconscious prejudices that their social
environments impress upon them. The other is that
the social and economic system is, in large measure
at least, subject to deliberate and scientific control —
though it will be as tough a job to bring it under control
as it was to bring Nature under control ; and that we
can only expect to have people leading full, rich lives
(which is, I suspect, the nght approach to the eternal
problem of happiness) if we bring into existence the
right kind of social and economic system for the
community. The quality of human life is determined
by the social organization, much as the quality of a
commercial product is determined by the machinery
and processes used to make it

200

MAN AND SOCIETY

This is all very utopian/' I can imagine many of
my readers saying. It may be; but, meanwhile, our
lives are being determined by the social machinery
around us, and if we do not try for a scientific solution
of the problem, we shall have an unscientific one forced
upon us, in the shape of Fascism, or Revolution, or just
chaos and dnft.

However, I would like to end with a perfectly
tangible suggestion for the applying of scientific
methods to social problems. I spoke earlier of the
enormous degree of innate differences between different
people There is absolutely no reason to suppose that,
if we wanted to, we could not utilize this fact to improve
the general quality of the human race, its physique
and intelligence, its general capacity for living, as
strikingly as we have been able to improve the breeds
of our domestic animals — and for what that means
you have only got to think of a fine modern carthorse
and racehorse, as against the little wild horse from Asia,
a good herd of Jersey cows against a flock of wild cattle,
a faithful watchdog against a wolf. Of course, no one
suggests that you could apply the same methods to
human beings as to farm animals, nor that the aim in
view would be similar : for one thing, variety, not
uniformity, must obviously be a major aim for man.
But the long-range improvement of the human race
by eugenics is obviously destined, once we have dealt
with the more immediate problems of social organiza-
tion, to be a major outlet for human altruism and
human hope. When you think of the possibilities
involved, it is rather absurd to find that the only body
concerning itself with the problem in this country is
a private one, the Eugenics Society, with comparatively

MAN AND SOCIETY

201

few members, mostly laymen in science. Yet, in a
way, that is all you can expect Such a society can
help to rouse public interest ; and at the moment that
is the chief thing which it can do, for as yet we
have not the knowledge to embark on large practical
measures

But why should not the Government provide
the knowledge — through the Census, which already
provides extremely valuable knowledge about the
numbers of people m the country, their occupations,
religious beliefs, birth-rates, death-rates, and so forth ?
It would be quite simple to extend this to gain much of
the knowledge needed as a possible basis for eugenics.
For instance, the census of 1911 gave us most valuable
statistics for the birth-rate in different economic classes
of the population — showing, for example, that unskilled
labour had a net rate of increase about double that of
the professional classes. In later censuses, this in-
formation has not been forthcoming — on the ground
of expense ! The Census could easily become an
instrument for a real national stock-taking. If trained
biologists and psychologists were called in to help
with it, we could obtain a picture of the biological
qualities of our national stock of human beings —
which, after all, is in the long run the one asset that
really matters — and the directions and trends along
which it was changing.

Facts are the food of science : df we are going to be
scientific about human nature and human society,
instead of just trusting to blind social and economic
forces (and see what a mess that blind trust has led
us into !), let us begin by insisting on a proper supply
of facts as grist to the scientific mill.

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MAN AND SOCIETY

Last of all I would like to mention one fact which
ought to be remedied. That is, that there are less than
fifty psychologists attached to our universities, and
probably, excluding psychological doctors, less than a
hundred professional psychologists in the country. And
as for social science, I doubt if Britain supports a
couple of dozen people devoting themselves primarily
and professionally to the subject. The other day I
attended the dinner given to celebrate the twenty-
first anniversary of the founding of the Biochemical
Society, and learnt, to my surprise, that it numbers
over eight hundred members, although it represents
a very young and rather specialized branch of chemical
science. The contrast is striking, and does, I think,
justify me in stating, as the main conclusion of this
chapter, that the scientific structure of this country is
lop-sided, and that the sciences dealing with man are
lamentably neglected.

CHAPTER XI

PURE SCIENCE

Discussion with Professor P. M. S. Blackett

J. H. Well, Blackett, I am glad to have you here.
There are quite a number of points on which I feel my
views could do with a little clearmg-up, and a discussion
like this helps in the clearing-up process.

P. B. As a matter of fact, Huxley, I was rather
hoping that you would clarify some of my ideas.
I suppose you have seen a more varied assortment of
scientific work than anyone else in existence — at
least, you have seen it in a shorter time.

J. H. Yes, I suppose that is true — I have seen a
pretty good sample, from physics to psychology, from
the purest mathematics to the most applied agriculture,
from breeding insects to designing aeroplanes, from
university laboratories to iron-works, from amateurs
pottering about with field-glasses to huge Government
research stations. The impressions I have got are so
varied that sometimes it is rather hard to sort them out
and see just what they mean.

P B. Yes, I should think so But now, out of
all these impressions, what are the chief points which
have emerged that you think this discussion of ours
could help to clear up ? I gather it is to deal mainly
with pure science.

/. H. Well, I thought there were a number of

203

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PURE SCIENCE

topics we might try to cover. First of all, whether there
is any real line between pure and applied science.
Then whether discoveries in pure science are not
influenced by practical considerations, and, indeed,
sometimes do not arise directly out of applied research.
And to what extent pure science is limited by mere tech-
nique. Then there is the question of why people go m
for research as a career, and their own attitude to their
work. Also the reason for the greater prestige of pure
as against applied science. I also hope to deal with
the possibilities open to the amateur scientist. And,
finally, there is the whole question of science in education
and the problem of getting a scientific background into
the general consciousness.

P. B . That is a long list ! So let us begin right
away. Now that you have seen a lot of both pure and
applied science going on, do you find the line between
them easier or harder to draw?

J. EL. On the whole I have realised that it is
harder to draw the line even than I thought it at first.
And in one respect I have corrected my previous ideas.
I used to imagine that important new discoveries
always started as pure science, and gradually filtered
down into practice, via applied science. Of course,
that is the usual way. Sir William Bragg, in his intro-
ductory chapter, has given a number of good examples
from the work of Faraday and other scientists who
have held posts at the Royal Institution. And this
is the view you will find in practically all the books on
the subject. As they are mostly written by pure
scientists, or by popular writers who get their ideas
from pure scientists, 1 suppose it is natural that they
should emphasize this view. But I have been much

Models to illustrate the different form of the wool molecule in un-
stretched wool fibres (left) and stretched wool fibres (right) as
determined by X-ray analysis supplemented by chemical tests.
Only a small section of the very long " molecular ladder ” is shown.
(See pp. So, 206 .)

From the Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, June, 1933-
By permission of the Publication Committee and Dr. W. T. Astbury,
author.

PURE SCIENCE 205

interested to find that things do not always happen
that way.

P B. Give me an example.

J, H . Well, perhaps the best case I saw concerns
the use of X-ray analysis of the fine structure of solid
materials. It is so good because it shows you both the
opposed tendencies at work — first the flow from pure
to applied, and then back again from applied to pure.
It all began with very pure laboratory research — but,
of course, you, as a physicist, know more about that
than I do

P. B. You mean Laue showing that X-rays when
passed through crystals were diffracted so as to give
what is called interference patterns, and then the
Braggs showing that from the particular patterns you
could discover exactly how the atoms were arranged
in the different crystals ?

y. H. Yes. And, of course, quite soon this was
taken up as a practical thing, to give information
about the internal constitution of materials when other
methods were no good — when microscopes will not
magnify enough, for instance, or there is not enough
material for chemical analysis. All over the place 1
found X-rays being used in practice : in steel works,
in all sorts of ways — for instance, to detect the invisible
changes due to cold rolling and tell you just when to
stop ; in the electrical industry, for making electrodes
for high-temperature discharge tubes; in the glass
industry, for finding out the causes of opalescence
in glass ; in engineering, for dealing with certain kinds
of scale in boilers ; in the paint industry for determining
the size of grain in paints, and therefore their con-
sistency.

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PURE SCIENCE

P. B. Well, so far things have been going according
to the usual rule, have they not — from the pure scientist
m his laboratory out into industrial practice ?

J. H Yes, but now the reverse process comes in.
Up at Leeds, m the Textile Department of the Univer-
sity, I had a talk with Dr Astbury. He had been
working with Bragg, and had shown that with the aid
of X-rays you could get new information about the
intimate structure not only of ordinary crystals, but
also of products of living organisms, such as plant and
animal fibres As a result, he was asked to go to
Leeds to study wool from the practical textile point of
view. He told me that he had some misgivings as to
whether this work was not going to be much less
interesting than the pure scientific studies with which
he had been busy up till then. The sequel, rather
amusingly, was just the reverse : the interest of his
work has steadily increased, until he now finds himself
concerned with some of the most fundamental and
exciting problems of biology. It turned out that
the wool fibre is a particularly favourable object
for studying the intimate structure of protein mole-
cules. As proteins are made of the most compli-
cated molecules known, with hundreds or even
thousands of atoms in them, this was, in any case, in-
teresting. With regard to wool protein in particular,
Astbury was able to prove that the actual molecules
were elastic, and could be pulled out like a concertina,
or perhaps more like a spring, and that it was this fact
which gives wool its extraordinary springiness ! This,
in conjunction with research by a chemical colleague
in the department, is leading to all sorts of im-
provements in the wool industry — for instance, to

PURE SCIENCE 207

much-improved methods of pre-shrinkage for woollen
fabrics

But it is leading much further afield, for protein
molecules are the most essential kinds of molecules in
all living matter, and new discoveries about any of
them means some fresh light on all. So this work
on the wool fibre, undertaken for severely practical
ends, is turning out to be of importance for all branches
of biology, up to the most pure. For instance, the work
seems likely to throw light on the very puzzling things
that happen in immunity — as when the injection of a
protein into the blood causes the animal or man to
produce something which will destroy that particular
protein, but no other, if it is injected again later. Most
fundamental, it is giving us much new evidence on the
actual chemical structure of the protein molecule —
how it is built up of long chains linked together ladder-
wise by rungs of special atoms at intervals. So here
quite definitely the current of discovery, after first
flowing from pure to applied, has reversed its direction,
and gone from applied to pure.

P. B. Is not the history of how the Second Law
of Thermodynamics was discovered an obvious example
of the same tendency — that is, of how a very important
piece of pure and abstract theory arose out of a very
practical technical problem ?

J. H I had not realized that.

P. B. Yes. The Second Law of Thermodynamics
arose from the attempt to make steam-engines more
efficient. The use of steam power was already wide-
spread, when Carnot, while seeking to understand
in detail how steam-engines worked, was led to a first
formulation, though still an imperfect one, of what is

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now called “ The Second Law of Thermodynamics ”
To-day, this second law of thermodynamics appears one
of the most far-reachmg of all physical laws. Did not
Eddington say once that against the Second Law there
is no possible appeal ? So the most abstract and general
of laws arose from the study of that most concrete
of objects, the steam-engine.

J. H . Do you mean that you think that the Industrial
Revolution caused the discovery of the laws of thermo-
dynamics ?

P. B In a sense, yes At least, it was clearly no
accident that thermodynamics was not discovered in
the late seventeenth century, when there were no steam-
engines, and was in the early nineteenth, when there
were steam-engines.

J. H. Of course, it is always difficult to say which
is the cause of two things which are found to happen
together — for instance, nationalism and wars, or even the
hen and the egg. But it is, I think, quite clear, not to
say trite, that there is often a close relation between
practical problems and advances m pure science.
Is it not a fact that the needs of improving efficiency
of radio-transmission have led to very fundamental
discoveries about the upper atmosphere?

P. B. Yes. The work of Appleton and others on
the highly conducting upper layers of the atmosphere
has given us absolutely new knowledge about our
own planet, and opened up a fascinating field of pure
research. And the work arose directly out of the dis-
covery that it is possible to send wireless messages round
the earth.

/. H . Well, Blackett, I want to ask you a question.
You used to work at the Cavendish Laboratory at

PURE SCIENCE

209

Cambridge. I went there recently, and was naturally
much excited about all the work on the structure of
the atom going on there. But do you think that that
is at all influenced by what is going on m the practical
world outside?

P B. Yes, I think it is to a great extent dependent
on what goes on outside. But that is not quite the
same relation that we have been discussing. I do not
mean that the problems studied have necessarily any
relation with any industrial or social needs; but the
technical methods used are largely dependent on
industrial technique.

J. H. But what about the famous " sealmg-wax-
and-string ” methods? I thought, from what I have
heard said, that all the best experiments were done
with the simplest apparatus.

P. B. Well, perhaps that was so once. But it is
not now. Why, Lord Rutherford's own experiments
require an apparatus of extreme complexity : innumer-
able valves and rows of thyratrons flashing, relays
clicking, and so on It looks rather like a cross between
the advertisement lights m Piccadilly and the trans-
mitting-station of a modern battleship. No, the
sealing-wax-and-strmg era is, perhaps unfortunately,
over. In its place modern physics uses all the technical
assistance it can get. In fact, it may be said that
the limits of knowledge at any time are set by the
technical means available. I believe that the reasons
for the rapidity of advance of modern physics is not
the superiority of the physicists of to-day, or even
their number, but that it is to a considerable extent
due to the technical aids made available by industry.

J. H . You mean the wireless valves you have just

210

PURE SCIENCE

been speaking of ? And then there are photographic
plates and the cinema. I suppose all these are an
essential part of much physical apparatus to-day.

P. B. Yes. Then the recent work on the dis-
integration of atoms by high-speed particles has owed
an enormous amount to the electrical industry, through
which high-tension transformers, condensers, and so
on have become readily available. In fact, the industrial
development of high-tension power transmission,
culminating in this country in the " grid,” has made
new experiments possible in the laboratory.

J. H. You mean that physics is limited much more
by the existing limitations of the materials and instru-
ments which it must use, than by the limitation of
pure thinking, or any lack of bright ideas ?

P. B. Certainly. The discovery of new materials
makes new advances possible. Often a possible
experiment is thought of, but has to wait a generation
for the necessary technique to make it possible to
carry it out.

J. H. I suppose the same sort of thing would be
true in astronomy with telescopes, would it not ?

P. B. Yes, absolutely. With the naked eye we
can see only a tiny portion of the universe. The
invention of the telescope at once made it possible
to see a bigger fraction. But ever since Galileo’s
first telescope in the seventeenth century, the size of
the fraction has been steadily increased by technical
progress. At the moment the biggest telescope in the
world is a one-hundred-inch reflector, but a two-
hundred-inch reflector is just being made, which will
multiply what we can now see sixteen-fold. The 4
difficulties in making and grinding a two-hundred-

PURE SCIENCE 211

inch mirror are enormous, but they are merely
technical.

J. H. I see So the progress of this branch of
astronomy is entirely dependent on the technique of
glass-making and glass-working. In general, I take
it, you mean that applied science, m the form of
technique in the control of materials, is a real limiting
factor in the progress of scientific theory — pure
knowledge, so called. How the scholastic type of
philosopher in the Middle Ages would have disliked
this idea, and, as a matter of fact, still dislikes it in
our own time 1 It is a slap in the face for the mtellect-
ualist, the believer in absolute knowledge, the highbrow
in general.

But there is still another possible way in which pure
science, it is suggested, can be influenced by practice.
That, too. Levy touched on in our opening discussion —
I mean the idea that the general direction which pure
science takes is not, as most scientists like to assert,
just determined by the free play of the human intellect,
but by the social and economic needs of the place and
penod. Do you believe that ?

P. B. On the whole, yes. Consider Newton’s
achievements, for instance. He did not himself think
of all the problems he so brilliantly solved. The pro-
blems were there, waiting to be solved — it was essential
both for industry and navigation that they should be
solved. A more accurate theory of mechanics was
essential for the development of many machines in
industrial use, and also for improvement of guns.
Then the development of astronomy was required
for the new developments going on in ocean navigation.
For instance, the problem of determining a ship’s

212

PURE SCIENCE

longitude at sea was urgent. This demanded either an
accurate chronometer or a knowledge of the motion
of the moon. So important was the problem that the
Government of the day offered prizes for both these
things, thus effectively, and quite impartially, stimu-
lating both pure and applied science. There is no
doubt that Newton was stimulated by the general'
background of technical problems waiting to be solved*'
to do his wonderful theoretical work

J. H . You mean the influence is there, but is
rather general? I think there are examples of that
sort in my line of country too. For instance, there
is all the work going on in connection with the big
museums of the world, collecting, naming, and classify-
ing the thousands of kinds of plants and animals.
This sounds rather useless, but it is really essential
for such practical problems as controlling insect pests
or insect-borne diseases. Indeed, it is not too much to
say that one essential, both for prosperous agnculture
and for good health — the latter especially in the
tropics — is this accurate systematic work that goes
on in museums; and that the realization of this fact
has led to the great development of this kind of work
and institution in the last hundred years
I think that there are two separate things in-
volved. There are impulses in human nature and
there are social and economic influences. After all,
for centuries there have been people with a strong
bent for natural history who have collected and
classified animals and plants. But they have been
few and sporadic. It is only recently that the big
museums have come into existence for doing the
collecting and classifying systematically with a large

PURE SCIENCE

213

staff, on a large scale. And big museums cost money,
and that would not have been forthcoming if it had not
been for the pressure of practical needs. Is it not
money which counts? Through the control exerted
by money, the practical needs of the time encourage
the growth of one branch of science, while another
only just manages to exist because no money is forth-
coming.

P. B. You mean that the man who pays the piper
calls the tune, and there must be some strong practical
inducement to make him pay ? That certainly is ex-
emplified by the fact that at the moment the Govern-
ment does a very large part of the paying in one way
or another — to an extent which most people perhaps
do not realize — and it would not do that unless it
felt it was getting its money's worth.

J. H. Yes. Of course most of the money put up by
the Government for research goes for the very practical
needs of war, industry, and agriculture.

P. B. And also remember that the Government,
through the D.S.I R. and other scholarship schemes,
supports directly a large number of young scientific
workers during their first few years of research. I
myself was enabled to start research after the war by a
Government grant The number of scientists who get
a start in this way runs into hundreds a year.

J. H . But of course you also get a great deal of
pretty pure research done by private firms, who must
obviously be actuated by the profit motive.

P. B . Yes, and sometimes they help to finance
Universities — for instance, the chemical laboratory in
Cambridge just after the war received a big endowment
from the oil industry.

214

PURE SCIENCE

J. H. Apropos of all this, in my last chapter I was
lamenting the fact that scientific research in this
country was badly lop-sided, with not nearly enough
being done m the biological, and especially the human,
sciences. I suppose you would agree this was due
to the stimulus given to research and teaching in
physics and chemistry by the huge development of
the industries based on these sciences, like the electrical
and chemical industries and engineering?

P. B. Certainly — up to a point. But is there not
also another set of influences at work, of a more
emotional nature? Orthodox religion has not been
very favourable to biological advance, has it ?

J, H. That is true enough. It really is almost
funny to-day to read the insults that were hurled at
Darwin and my grandfather on the evolution question
— though it was serious enough at the time. But of
course the process still goes on. Orthodox morality
to-day is not very favourable to modern psychology,
and I know a case where the fact that a young biologist
had done research on problems connected with birth
control stood in the way of his advancement.

But I would like to ask you another question.
What about research which is nominally done for
practical ends, but as a matter of fact is actually
useless? For instance, the breeding of new wheats
which can be grown in new regions, like semi-deserts
or the arctic, ]ust when there is no profit in wheat
from the ordinary wheat areas? That sort of work
is still going on.

P. B. Well, I suppose that is because the work was
started when it looked as if it would be useful, and,
once started, it carried on with its own momentum,

PURE SCIENCE

215

so to speak. I am sure there is a momentum of this
sort in all scientific research, both pure and applied.

J. H. Yes, I think that is fair enough. Once a
scientific problem has been properly stated, it more or
less inevitably works itself out. I suppose that is true
with your work in atomic physics As soon as the
facts of radioactivity made it clear that the atom was
not the ultimate unit of matter, but had a structure
of its own, research was bound to go on and clear up
the problem of just what that structure was

P. B. Perfectly true „ On the other hand, the
rate at which a problem gets worked out depends on
the number and quality of the research workers engaged
on it, and the facilities at their disposal; and that is
largely determined by the money available. The
momentum is always there, but it is helped or checked
by practical considerations

J. H. And, of course, pure research gets more and
more complicated and expensive all the time, so that
those practical considerations come to have more and
more of an influence. But we must not spend all our
time on this question. I want to get your views on
another point — about the individual research worker
in pure science. Why does anyone in particular go
in for science as a career ?

P B Well, in my case it was largely that I liked
doing things with my hands, and had a strong mechan-
ical bent.

/. H. I suppose there are plenty of people in
physical and chemical laboratories who get started
that way. But I think there are other quite different
bents which also bring other types in. For instance,
there is the natural history bent. Many boys, often with

216

PURE SCIENCE

poor mechanical ability, have a passion for Nature.
When this is combined with a strong collecting instinct,
it may produce the systematic zoologist or botanist;
when not so combined it is likely to give the world
the general biologist or geologist. Charles Darwin
had a very strong collecting instinct, combined with a
deep love of Nature. Then there is the more philosophic
bent, which, if not too philosophic, but combined with
an interest m concrete objects, gives you what we may
call the scientific scholar, who is primarily interested
in bringing intellectual order into his branch of science.
William Bateson had this, rather curiously combined
with the collecting instinct. Sir Arthur Eddington
has it combined with intense mathematical ability.
And finally, there is the social bent, that impulse to
do something useful. This has sent many men into
professions like medicine or the Church : so long as
scientific work provides opportunities of obvious
usefulness, it will send some men into science.

P. B. But that will not explain why there are so
many more scientists to-day than formerly.

J. H. No. That, I take it, is a question of outlets
and social atmosphere. It is obvious that men and
women with these same various bents must have
existed all through history, but that they could not
have become scientists in the days before there was
any science. In the Middle Ages, the mechanically-
minded had very few outlets — that bent hardly got a
chance, any more than it did in pre-war Russia. There
were few outlets, too, for the collecting bent — save
perhaps a few odd professions like that of the herbalist.
The nature-lover had to satisfy himself with hunting
or the life of a farmer. The scholar’s bent pushed

C a v e n d i s h Laborato ry
{See p. 210.)

Technical skill increases man's knowledge of the universe. Gali-
leo's telescope (inset) contrasted with a modern telescope (a 74-inch
reflector for the University of Toronto, built at Newcastle-on-Tyne).
(See p. 210.)

By courtesy of “ Nature " (for 74" reflector). The Galileo Telescope
from “ The Depths of the Universe by G. E. Hale (Scribner).

PURE SCIENCE

217

men into theology or philosophy, the social bent into
becoming a parson or a friar.

P. B. Yes. And even if we compare to-day with
the Victorian era, conditions have changed a great
deal. The clerical profession no longer has either the
social or the intellectual attractions it used to possess.
The war has influenced a great many people against
a naval or military career. Business is not paying so
well; politics has not the prestige it once had. So
it comes about that a number of young men who a
couple of generations back would not have thought
twice about entering one of the traditional professions,
are to-day taking up science

J. H . I think that is true. And so long as there
are scientific posts to fill, this state of affairs, though
perhaps unpleasant for the country at large, is good for
science.

P. B. Yes, certainly. But then there is the question
of the scientist's own attitude towards his work. Did
you, for instance, get an impression during your tour
that any marked difference of attitude exists between
those working in pure research laboratories and those
in technical laboratories?

J. H. Well, I think that m the best industrial
laboratories, at any rate, the keenness and intellectual
interest in the work were just as marked as in, say,
the Cavendish Laboratory. Still, I think there is
usually a greater attraction in pure research, connected
with the intellectual excitement of finding out general
laws, and also a greater prestige attached to it.

P. B. On the other hand, it is a fact that the actual
activity which occupies nine-tenths of the time of an
experimental physicist is nearly the same, whether

218 PURE SCIENCE

the work is pure or applied. Actually, I am 'inclined
to think that the greater prestige m man}’ quarters
of pure as opposed to applied research is partly due
to the pleasanter conditions under which it is often
carried out. For instance, the Universities offer such
a pleasant mode of life, where one is one's own master
of how and when one shall work, that some of the
attraction of the conditions under which work is done
gets attributed to the work itself.

J. H. But, after all, I think it is reasonable that
pure research should enjoy its present great prestige —
though it is certainly going a bit far when a scientist
goes out of his way to claim that his work is completely
useless.

P. B. Yes. I have heard that boast too. I am
not sure I have not made it myself. There certainly
are elements of snobbery in that claim. That society
should pay one to amuse oneself at an entirely useless
occupation is gratifying to one's self-satisfaction.
Whereas formerly social prestige was attached to not
working at all, now it is sometimes attached to doing
something useless.

J. H. Well, there is another side to it. Society
always likes to have its prophets — its medicine-men,
if you like — to tell it about the deep mysteries of the
universe ; and science, in the persons of some scientists
at least, is tending to become a substitute for theology
in this field, isn't it ?

P. B, Yes, I think it is clear that the general public
likes to hear about science, or rather about some
aspects of science.

J. H. And also a good many people like to do
amateur scientific work for themselves.

PURE SCIENCE 219

P. B' Well, I don't think that is possible in modem
physics.

J. H. That is a pity — but it is possible in various
other fields. For instance, the Meteorological Office
gets reports from observers all over the country as to
the dates of flowering and fruiting of various wild plants.
Then there was a scheme launched about twenty
years ago by the British Ornithological Union to study
the migration of birds, which secured valuable results.
That also needed the collaboration of observers all
over the country, and I remember as a boy the
interest it added to my bird-watching At the moment
a rather ambitious scheme has just been launched to
start a National Institute of Field Ornithology at
Oxford, which should act as headquarters for all the
bird-watchers m the country, to plan out schemes in
which they could take part, to give information as to
the most interesting lines of work for the amateur to
take up, the best methods to be adopted, and so on. 1

Then amateur astronomers carry out a good deal
of useful observation. Again, there are regional
surveys to be undertaken, m which botanists, entomo-
logists, geographers, and all sorts of others interested
in field science can profitably co-operate. These can
best be carried out under the auspices of local scientific
societies, of which there are a good many doing valuable
work in this country.

P. B. And, of course, the amateur radio fans have
done very useful work — it was they, I believe, who first
started experimenting with short-wave transmission,
and so indirectly stimulated the researches which led

1 Anyone interested m this scheme can obtain particulars
from Dr. W. B. Alexander, The Museum, Oxford.

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PURE SCIENCE

Results of co-operation by amateur scientists A map showing
the density of population of the common heron m England and
Wales. The different shadings show the number of breeding
pairs per 1 00,000 acres. The research was organized through the
ornithological journal, British Birds . (See p. 219 )

By permission of E. M. Nicholson and the Editor of “ Discovery .’ 3

Another piece of co-operative amateur research. The map
shows the density of population of a water-bird, the crested
grebe. The shading indicates the number of breeding pairs per
100,000 acres ; the same areas are used as for the heron (p. 220),
The resemblances to and differences from the map for the heron
are interesting. (See p. 219.)

By permission ofE . M. Nicholson and the Editor of “ Discovery

222

PURE SCIENCE

to the recent extension of our knowledge about the
upper layers of the atmosphere of our own planet,
that you mentioned earlier.

J H . Yes. And my general point is that the
amateur scientist has always flourished in this country,
and with a little organization — such as the B B.C.
itself has on occasion helped to provide — he can
continue to be really useful to science, while at the
same time having an interesting hobby for himself.

P. B. But that can only cover a small part of the
population.

J. H. Oh, certainly * But by proper education you
can interest a great number of people m science.

P. B. Why do you want to ?

J. H. Well, take my own subject, biology. I am
keen on more biology as a recognized part of general
education. This is important from the point of view
of health, and will also encourage a sensible attitude
to life, as opposed to one based merely on tradition
or prejudice. I have rather a quarrel with you
physicists and chemists for pinching so much of the
science curriculum in schools !

P P. But would a better scientific education
make so much difference, after all ?

J. H. Not much, perhaps — so long, at any rate,
as people imbibe a whole set of contrary ideas along
with their science. At the moment, our civilization
is very scientific in its attitude to some problems, like
engineering or aviation, but highly unscientific in
regard to others, like education or politics. One
ought not to mix one's general attitudes, any more
than one ought to mix one's drinks

But something could be done if the powers that be

PURE SCIENCE

223

really believed in scientific method, and if the mass of
the people really believed that science could help to
put the world right , then scientists would get a better
chance to help us out of our troubles.

P. B. But just how could science be of more help
in the direction of affairs ?

J. H. Well, to start with, by the collection of
statistics on social matters. After all, science must
begin with the facts

P. B. Well, that will not take you very far. I should
imagine that there are already innumerable blue books
with admirable collections of facts that have never
been acted on. For instance, the League of Nations'
report on the Armament Industry, published soon
after the war.

J. H. Oh, but that is only the first step, though a
very necessary one. My point is that you could get a
general outlook in the country which would be scientific
all round, just as you may have a nationalist outlook,
or a religious outlook, or a socialist outlook.

P B. No, there I disagree ! As a matter of scientific
observation I find that my scientific colleagues, between
them, represent all the possible outlooks you have
mentioned. And, of course, this is inevitable. For
once one gets into the field of action, everyone
becomes a politician, however much he may try to be
scientific.

J. H. I agree that at the moment scientists have
their personal and their class prejudices, like any-
one else. I was really thinking of a slow process
tending towards a more uniformly scientific outlook on
social problems. However, we are getting into rather
deep water, are we not ? We can't really go into the

224

PURE SCIENCE

question now. But I shall make a point of taking it
up with Levy in my final discussion with him.

P. B. Well, don't be too optimistic. I am afraid
that if society thinks that the scientist is going to
be its saviour, it will find him a broken reed.

J. H, And that would be bad for science as well
as for society. All right, I promise I will not be too
optimistic ; but I still feel that a scientific attitude to
social problems is better than an unscientific one,
and that we could do something to get it realized.

CHAPTER XII

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

S O far, I have been speaking about the scientific
research going on here which is directed to the
needs of this country. In this chapter I want to
say something of its wider aspects — imperial and
international.

The British Empire is the biggest, the most scattered,
and the most heterogeneous political association there
has ever been — or that there is ever likely to be until
the World State arrives. It contains over a fifth of
the land areas of the globe, and nearly a quarter of its
population. It embraces one whole continent and bits
of all the five others. It includes entirely uninhabited
territories in the Antarctic, and also some of the
world's most densely populated regions. Among its
inhabitants are Eskimos who have never seen a tree or
a horse, African savages who kill lions with spears,
Dyak head-hunters who have never seen ice or snow,
Australian black-fellows living a life not unlike that
of our prehistoric ancestors a hundred thousand years
ago^ In it live the great majority of the Hindus; it
includes more pagans than Christians, more brown and
black people than white. It comprises self-governing
dominions, crown colonies, self-governing colonies, pro-
tectorates, native states, mandates, and spheres of
influence. What is science doing towards the needs of
this extraordinary agglomeration ?

9 225

226 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

In the first place, of course, most of the separate
units have their own scientific organization. India
is one of the few countries to boast a Biological Survey —
though this has suffered a good deal in the crisis.
The dominions have all their own universities, agri-
cultural research stations, and so on. When I was
in Africa four years ago, I saw something of the
excellent work being done by the research workers
in such subjects as medicine, agriculture, forestry,
geology, veterinary science in our various East African
colonies

This is as it should be ; for however general scientific
problems may be, they arise in different forms in
different conditions, and can only be worked out
locally. Let me give just one example. Soil science,
thanks largely to the Russians and to the work of
English scientists at Rothamsted, has during the
present century reached a high development. But
tropical soils provide a special problem. Owing to
the heat and the different conditions of tropical rainfall
and plant growth, their formation and nature are
different from those of temperate regions. So it is
essential to study them on the spot. In East Africa
this is being undertaken by the fine research station
at Amani, which I visited, perched high up in the
tropical rain-forests of the Tanganyika hills. The
Germans started it, and after the war we enlarged it
to serve the needs of all the East African territories.
The information it is getting on African soils will be
invaluable for local agriculture, and could not have
been obtained from research at home.

But essential though local research is, centralized
work and co-ordination are also necessary, and a great

IwsSf

, , ■. : - :

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 227

deal has" been done to provide these, especially in the
years since the war. One very important method of
co-ordination is that of the Imperial Agricultural
Bureaus, established after the Imperial Conference in
1927. These were attached to laboratories where
especially good work was going on in the particular
subjects concerned. Their function is to collect and
analyse all the information in their particular field,
and to make it available for the Empire at large,
either by publishing bulletins and summaries, or
by replying directly to queries. So, to go back to
soil again, the Bureau for soil science is attached to
Rothamsted. The usefulness of the work at Amam
on tropical soils is not confined to East Africa, for it
is all collated by the Bureau at home, studied in relation
to the general principles of soil science, and made
available to other tropical dependencies

I came across several of these Bureaus during my
tour of this country. The one for animal breeding is
attached to the Animal Breeding Research Department
at Edinburgh, the one for animal nutrition to the
Rowett Institute at Aberdeen, the one for pasture and
grassland to Stapledon's place at Aberystwyth. They
are not all in Britain, however; in accordance with
the principle that they should be attached to the
institution where the most important research on the
subject was in progress, the one concerning veterinary
science, for instance, was put at Ondesterpoort, in
the Union of South Africa.

There is no doubt that these co-ordinating and
distributing centres are performing a very useful
function. And, as their publications circulate every-
where, they are useful to the world at large as well

228 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

as to the Empire, and indeed in some cases they are
almost in the position of world centres

The same sort of thing, in addition to much actual
research work, is done by two other bodies, the Imperial
Institute of Entomology, which works m close co-
operation with the Natural History Museum at South
Kensington, and that of Mycology, which works m
liaison with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.
Mycology is an unfamiliar word — it means fungus
science, and the Institute concerns itself with all the
moulds and rusts and other fungus pests of trees and
crops.

Entomology, of course, is the study of insects,
and insects are the most serious enemies of man in the
world — much more serious than any of the larger
animals. Think of all the work going on in connection
with the Institute of Entomology and the insect room of
the Museum at South Kensington, some men spending
their lives collecting insects of every possible kmd from
all the corners of the earth, and other men spending
their lives describing, naming, and classifying them.
(This, by the way, is a pretty big job, as half a million
or so different kinds of insects are known already,
and hundreds of new kinds are discovered every year.)
Most people, I suppose, if they ever give it a thought,
would say it was a very useless and unpractical sort
of job. Yet its practical importance is really very
great, because if any animal or plant is useful or
harmful, the first essential, in taking practical steps
about it, is to be sure you know what you are dealing
with. It is not much use knowing vaguely that
mosquitoes carry malaria. As a matter of fact, some
do and some do not ; and of those that do, some breed

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 229

in certain well-defined kinds of situations, and others
in others : to get rid of malaria, you must, as a first
step, be able to identify and name the different kinds
Or again, one particular beetle may be very destructive
to crops, while its first cousin is quite harmless. If
you want to deal with the pest by what is called bio-
logical control — keeping its numbers down by means of
introducing parasites — you will find that you must
have very accurate knowledge of the different species
of parasites, because one may only attack the harmless
beetle, while a close relative, which perhaps at first
sight looks just the same, is very effective against the
pest.

The Imperial Institute of Entomology identifies
over one hundred thousand specimens of insects every
year, including a number of species new to science.
(It is, by the way, interesting to know that the number
of wholly new species described is steadily mounting
year by year, so little has man yet explored the biology
of this planet.) More than half the resources of the
Institute go towards the publication of a periodical
which gives abstracts of all scientific papers dealing
with the activities of every kind of insect pest through-
out the world.

To illustrate the importance of systematic work,
I may mention an example from the sphere of
Mycology The citrus-fruit plantations of West
Australia were suffering seriously from a fungus
pest. This was taken to be the same as a similar
fungus which had been doing damage in Florida,
and the control measures that had worked well in
Florida were tried, but with no effect. Then the
Imperial Institute of Mycology looked into the matter,

230 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

and found that the two fungi were really quite distinct,
and had quite different life-histones, so that wholly
different control measures were needed in Australia.

One of the most fascinating scientific institutions
in existence is the field laboratory of the Institute of
Entomology, out at Farnham Royal. This has been
nicknamed the " Parasite Zoo,” for its function is to
supply parasites in bulk to all parts of the Empire.
The parasites are parasites of insect pests; they are
themselves insects, which lay their eggs in the grubs
or eggs of the pests and devour them from the inside.
In some cases this method has been a spectacular
success. For instance, the valuable coconut crop of
Fiji was in serious danger of destruction from a little
moth which somehow got introduced into the islands
towards the end of last century. Three entomologists
were set the job of finding a parasite for it. At the
suggestion of the Imperial Institute of Entomology,
they looked in Malaya, and there found what they
wanted. By chartering a special steamer, living
parasites were brought to Fiji, bred there in bulk, and
liberated ; and within four years the moth had become
so rare as no longer to be of any importance as a pest.

At Farnham Royal, entomologists are engaged on
the search for the right kinds of parasite, the study of
all their little habits, the best methods of rearing and
transporting them in bulk. They are now busy trying
to find a parasite for a sawfly which attacks Canadian
wheat. That such problems are of very practical
importance is shown by the fact that this particular
species of insect did over two million pounds worth of
damage in one year in Manitoba alone !

Other extremely important work on insects is done

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 231

by Committees of the Economic Advisory Council.
One instance is the research on that fearful scourge of
African men and African cattle, the tsetse fly. This
work, thanks largely to the success of Swynnerton's
long-continued practical experimentation in Tangan-
yika, is now entering on a new and more hopeful
phase. Equally important is the work of the Locust
Committee. At the end of the war, the Imperial
Institute of Entomology secured the services of Uvarov,
a Russian scientist who had discovered the unexpected
but fundamental fact that all true locusts existed in
two quite different forms, a solitary form which lives
like any other grasshopper, and a swarming form
which possesses the instinct to migrate in huge hordes.
Besides their habits, the two differ also in their colour
and a number of other points. Since then much of the
research has been directed to finding where the solitary
form has its main home, from which the hordes of
swarmers will set out when they are produced; and
to discovering what causes one form to change into
the other. If you can find the main home, you may
be able to prevent disaster by destroying the locusts
there when they are not swarming. The Committee
receives reports from all over Africa as to the presence
and movements of locusts, and the mr -miner of this
information is now beginning to narrow down the field
in which to look for the main homes of the three
different species of African locusts.

Meanwhile, another line of attack is being tried.
Experiment showed that locusts in flight were killed
very quickly by finely-powdered sodium arsenite.
After many trials, it has been found possible to manu-
facture this in the shape of a dust fine enough to be

International co-operation in anti-locust research. All the
records of locusts sent in from every part of Africa are plotted on
monthly maps, from which general maps showing the breeding
places (dots) and the migrating swarms (arrows) are compiled. In
this map is shown the Migratory Locust situation in 1928, when
the beginning of the present outbreak was recorded : the first
swarms arose close to the bend of the Niger, and soon developed a
tendency to spread, mainly eastwards. In the following generations
the swarms extended right across the continent, then turned south,
and by the ninth generation in 1932 (see map, p. 233) the whole of
East Africa was overrun by swarms. Their migration then took a
general south-westward direction and many swarms reached South

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 233

in* * 20° 30° 40° 50*

Africa, where they arrived at the wrong season and were unable
to breed owing to the dry and cold weather.

The map on p. 232 indicates where the outbreak originally arose
by a transformation of the solitary phase into the swarming one
(see text). Maps like that on this page are used to study the laws
regulating the migrations so as to be able to forecast locust
invasions. (See p. 231.)

(Redrawn after the Reports of the Economic Advisory Council’s
Committee on Locust Control.)

By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.

234 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

discharged into the air as a cloud ; and now ah aviator
has gone out with an Imperial Airways machine to
Northern Rhodesia to try the effect of flying over a
swarm of migrating locusts and discharging this poison
dust right into them. If it is as successful as is hoped,
it will be much the best method for checking the ravages
of locusts once they have started on their migratory
career.

Now I come to another point. The work at the
“ Parasite Zoo ” was largely financed by the Empire
Marketing Board, w r hich, as most people know, came to
an end last year. It has now been in part taken over by
an organization which deals with the Imperial Bureaus,
and is supported by all parts of the Empire ; but owing
to its type of organization, this is constantly having
to refer decisions back to the Governments concerned,
and it has only been financed for a year at a time. This
lack of security is very bad for a scientific institution,
both because it prevents any proper continuity of
policy, which is essential for science with its long-range
vision, and because it leaves the scientists engaged on
the work in a very insecure and unsettling position,
with unsettling effects on the existing staff and increased
difficulties in recruiting new personnel of high standard.

The ordinary public knew of the Empire Marketing
Board chiefly by its posters and its propaganda
campaigns; but behind the scenes it was engaged
on a really big programme of research. To give only
a few examples of its research activities, it was giving
substantial help to the valuable work of the D.S.I.R.
on cold storage, which has made it possible to transport
apples and other fruits across the ocean and to store
home fruit for long periods without appreciable loss,

Museum research.. A. corner of one of the rooms of the insect
department of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington.
(See pp. 212, 228.)

By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum .

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 235

and is leading to marked improvement in cold-storage
methods for meat and fish. It has financed work
by a zoologist on the curious cycles of alternating
abundance and scarcity which are found in many
animals and birds. This is proving to be of im-
portance to home agriculture in regard to periodic
plagues of field mice ; to the fur industry in regard to
prophesying the fat and lean years for fur trapping;
to medicine in forecasting the times of abundance of
wild rodents which carry human plague ; to the
sportsman in understanding the causes of periodic
scarcity of game-birds ; and so on. Then it helped in a
very interesting investigation on the possibilities of
“ road-trains,” with special chassis and a large number
of wheels, capable of operating in new countries over
the roughest roads : this, if successful, may prove to
be the solution of the goods transport problem in many
parts of Africa, India, and Australia. To scientists
in this country whose work concerned problems of
imperial scope, it gave grants to travel and see the
men and the problems on the spot — a most important
means of securing added efficiency.

In general, it has often helped to finance research
for which it might have been difficult to get funds
through the ordinary channel, because it overlapped
into several fields, or concerned several different
governments, or was of rather an unusual or adventurous
nature. Its untimely end is a real blow to scientific
research on a co-operative imperial basis. It is a
curious commentary on the phase of nationalism
through which the world is passing, that this work,
so hopefully launched and so well carried out on a
basis of co-operation between the different parts of

236 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

the Empire, should have split largely on the rock of
nationalism on the part of certain of the Dominions,
who, to put it bluntly, wanted their own show rather
than co-operate with a central body, however good,
which had its headquarters m London — though of
course the economy campaign must bear its share of
the blame

To show what difficulties are being brought about
by the expir}- 7 of the Board, I may mention the case of
Kew. Most people know Kew for its lovely gardens;
but it is also the centre of botanical research for the
Empire. On any question of identifying a plant, you
call m Kew. Most of the staff are engaged on work in
the Herbarium, which houses an enormous collection
of plant specimens from all over the world, duly named
and classified. The Herbarium has eight scientific
workers of its own; but, in addition, the Empire
Marketing Board was paying the salaries of seven other
scientists to get on with this important work, also of
several technical assistants, and of an economic botanist,
who also has been busy on a most important ]ob —
nothing less than a complete descriptive catalogue of
all the plants grown as crops for profit anywhere
within the Empire. And of course the problem now
is, what is to become of all these men and all the work
they have begun ? Should not the authorities in this
country take over the responsibility ?

That sort of systematic work is just as important
for higher plants as it is for fungi or for insects. This
is notably so for many useful timber trees and fibre
plants, which may look very much like some other
less useful species. Sometimes you have to take
extremely fine points into consideration. For instance,

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 237

there are two varieties of camphor plant. One yields
camphor oil when distilled, but the other is much more
desirable, because it yields the solid camphor which
is wanted commercially. Yet the two cannot be
distinguished to look at

Or again, a species of St John's- wort, that pretty
yellow wildflower, got accidentally introduced into
Australia, spread like wildfire, and turned into a real
pest. It was identified as the common British St.
John's-wort, and certain insect enemies of this plant
were introduced into Australia to attack it. But they
had no effect. Then Kew looked into the matter
carefully, and found it was really the continental
variety, which is extremely like the English variety
in appearance, but is attacked by different insects !

But it is not only such systematic work with which
Kew is concerned. It was responsible for bringing
the cinchona tree, from the bark of which quinine
is made, from Peru to India, and so helping m the
campaign against malaria; for getting the Brazilian
rubber plant from its native home and distributing
it over the Empire; for spreading the tung-oil plant
of China, which yields such good pamt and varnish,
all over the semi-tropics; and the chalmoogra plant,
which yields the best specific against leprosy, from its
Asiatic home into Africa and the West Indies, where
it is badly needed. Often the process is carried out
in steps, the plants being grown for a spell in one of
the greenhouses in Kew before they are sent out to their
new homes.

There are many other fields in which empire needs
are dictating the course of research. One very import-
ant one is forestry. Think of the teak of Burma, the

238 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

square miles of pine forests in Canada being used up
every year for timber and for newsprint ; the amazing
variety of trees m the tropical forests of India, Africa,
Guiana. The imperial centre for forestry is attached
to Oxford University, and at Princes Risborough there
is a Forest Products Station of imperial scope under the
D S.I.R.

Then there is medicine All sorts of diseases happily
unknown in this country are prevalent in the tropics.
Apart from all the research on tropical medicine that
goes on m India and the colonies, a good deal is carried
out m this country to cater for the needs of sailors and
others who have come back after contracting such
diseases abroad. So we find the study of them chiefly
in our two greatest seaport towns, London and Liverpool.

I wish I had space to treat of the Seamen's Hospital
down by the docks, and the work of the School of
Tropical Medicine, now combined with the Ross
Institute for Malaria, in Bloomsbury, but I must pass
on.

There is also an imperial side to broadcasting.
Empire radio is destined to be an important link
between Englishmen all over the globe, and that
depends a great deal on the progress of research on
short-wave transmission, which is being actively
carried on by the G.P.O., the commercial companies,
and the B.B.C.

Radio links up with the human element ; and this is
perhaps in the long run the most important of all
fields for science that is planned on the Empire scale.

One of the greatest difficulties in the way of a scattered
heterogeneous empire like ours is to effect mutual
understanding between groups differing in race, colour,

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 239

tradition, and level of civilization. The wireless and
the cinema, both products of applied science, are
likely to be the most important agencies in this respect,
if properly used. I remember talking in Kenya with
the head of the Medical Department, and hearing of
the extraordinary success he had had with a home-made
film in persuading tribal natives to co-operate in a
campaign for ridding their area of hookworm and
other diseases; and recently comes news of a large
experiment in India, in which villages are to be provided
with communal wireless sets.

Still more important is scientific research on the
human beings themselves. We are astonishingly
ignorant in many ways about our Empire. There
are no reliable vital statistics over most of Africa.
I tried when I was there to get some information as
to infant mortality : all that I could discover was that
it must be terribly high — perhaps six to twelve times
as high as in England, so that sometimes half the babies
born would die in the first year of life; but accurate
figures were lacking on this and on the equally important
question of the average length of life of African natives.

Things are pretty bad, too, as regards research on
health. Some years ago the Medical Research Council
and the Empire Marketing Board had an investigation
made of the physique of two neighbouring Kenya
tribes, the Masai and the Kikuyu, in relation to their
diet. The result was very striking. The Masai are
famous for their good physique and bravery — they
are among the tribes who kill lions with spears. The
Kikuyu are of smaller stature and of much poorer
physique. This is specially true of the men; the
women, though small, are renowned for their power

2 4 0 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

of carrying heavy weights. I myself saw a woman
carrying a load of firewood which I could only just
lift off the ground with my two hands , she was carrying
it for several miles

Now, the Masai live entirely on animal food —
almost exclusively the blood and milk of their cattle.
The Kikuyu live mainly on a vegetable diet, which
is not satisfactory as regards its food- values, and,
what is more, the men, owing to tribal traditions,
have a poorer diet than their women-folk. There is,
it appears, no doubt that the addition of a moderate
amount of high-quality protein, in the form of meat,
to the Kikuyus' diet would raise their physique and
energy quite considerably. Nor do the Masai escape
the penalties of one-sidedness : they appear to suffer
a good deal from diseases of rheumatic type, which
in all probability could be much reduced if they took
to a better-balanced mixed diet.

I also found when I was out there that the belief
still lingered among some white employers of black
labour that the black man needed only a few handfuls
of maize-meal to keep him in good trim. This is, as
a matter of fact, a complete fallacy : a black man
has the same general physiology as a white man ; and
many complaints about “ lazy niggers ” and the like
owe their existence entirely to the short-sighted policy
of the white employers who want to get a great deal
in labour for next to nothing in the shape of food, and
provide a cheap diet on which no human being, white
or black, can help being listless and without energy.

Although there has been much improvement of
late years in the diet provided for native labour,
especially by big concerns like mines, it still remains

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 241

true that improper and inadequate diet, whether due to
their own or their white employers’ fault, is one great
cause of backwardness among the native inhabitants of
Africa — and doubtless of other primitive parts of the
Empire Considering what far-reaching effects their
increased energy would have — greater efficiency in their
own agriculture and in work for white employers,
greater ambition and greater intelligence, greater
needs and greater purchasing power — it is almost
ludicrous that this preliminary investigation of the
two Kenya tribes has not been followed up by a full
survey on an imperial scale.

However, it must be admitted that scientific research,
however well it may bring out the facts, is not always
acted upon This is all too clear in another branch
of medicine — that which deals with parasitic disease.
To go back to East Africa, because I happen to have
been there myself, I know that the medical authorities
agree that it is very unlikely that there are any adult
natives who are not suffering from some drain on their
health due to parasitic infection — whether round-
worms, or the horrible hookworm which sucks blood
from the walls of your intestine and energy from your
whole system, or the microscopic malaria parasite
which infects your blood and, even if it does not give
rise to acute fever, keeps you chronically below your
full level of vitality, or the numerous other tropical
diseases caused by living invaders. In Western
European countries, these parasitic enemies of man
have been brought under adequate control, and some-
times entirely stamped out. There is no ultimate
reason why they should not be also in Africa or India.
If this were done, and at the same time diet were
R

242 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

corrected, the whole character of the black and brown
peoples of the Empire would change, and a new level
of life could be opened to them. Here indeed is a field
for science and its applications.

Another vast field for research is in anthropology —
the study of human customs and beliefs and social
organization. Some very serious mistakes have been
made in the past even by the most well-meaning of
missionaries and administrators, simply because they
did not understand the ideas of the people with whom
they had to deal T o take only one example, land among
African tribes is not owned outright by individuals,
but by a clan or family group, regarded as existing
in the past and the future as well as in the present.
Individuals have only temporary rights. Usually the
chiefs have certain more or less feudal rights as well.
The white man comes along with his ideas, and may
convert a chiefs feudal privilege into outright ownership,
or get at loggerheads with a whole clan when he imagined
he was only dealing with an individual.

Some of the most difficult problems arise with natives
who are no longer living their immemorial tribal lives,
but are living in contact with the white man’s system.
For these, there is grave danger of falling between
two stools, and acquiring the less desirable qualities
both of white and of native life. Here a new kind of
anthropology is needed — not the very pure kind
which was always looking out, quite naturally, for the
most primitive and the most untouched tribes, but an
applied .anthropology, halfway to sociology, to study
the effect of mixture of cultures with a view to guidance
and control. Of late years, a beginning has been made
with such work, largely under the influence of Professor

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 243

Malinowski of the London School of Economics, and of
the International Institute of African Languages and
Cultures ; but the problem is acute, and much remains
to be done. So it is good news that a scheme is now
in being in this country whereby in the near future
a broad comparative survey is to be made of Africa.
This African Research Survey will deal with the
problems of our African Empire under four heads — that
of economics, of administration, of anthropology and
sociology, and of natural science. By this means it
is hoped many gaps and defects in co-ordination will
become apparent and the way be opened for a more
scientific policy.

At any rate, this is a truly scientific approach to the
problem of the large backward areas of the world,
and perhaps out of it there will grow some provision
for an institution on a more permanent basis which
could continue to make provision for that ever-pressing
need, scientific study, and could act as an advisory
centre for African affairs.

This survey will also take notice of what is being
done in the African possessions of other nations.
Here, it will be seen, an international aspect comes in.
The same, by the way, was true for the much more
specific example of locust research. In this field the
Italians and the French are co-operating with us by
sending in reports from their territories to the Locust
Committee in England, which collates the information
for the benefit of all parties concerned; and inter-
national conferences on the subject are held periodically.

As a matter of fact, the shrinkage of the world due
to improved communications is making international
co-operation in science and research (as in many other

244 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

fields !) even more pressing than m old days. Let me
just recall the fact that the League of Nations has a
Health Section, and that this is co-operating with other
interested bodies to investigate the possibility of
spreading diseases, such as yellow fever, by aeroplane,
and to lay down regulations to minimize the danger.
It has also undertaken important special investigations,
such as that into the best methods of getting rid of
malaria m Europe, and it has further done valuable
work in regard to biological and medical standardization.

Perhaps you are surprised to see that word in a
biological context, but I can assure you that standard-
ization is ]ust as important for applied biology — in
medicine, veterinary science, agriculture, and public
health, for instance — as it is for applied physics and
chemistry in industry. I spoke in an earlier chapter of
the results achieved by insulin in diabetes. But
they could not be achieved without an extremely
exact dosage.

Diabetes is essentially an inability of the tissues
to utilize the sugar circulating in the blood, which is
the main source of fuel for their vital energies. The
way insulin helps m diabetes is by making it possible
for the tissues to do this. If you do not give enough
insulin, the tissues do not take up enough sugar, and the
diabetic symptoms are not removed. If you give too
much, the tissues take up so much sugar that enough
is not left in the blood, and all sorts of serious conse-
quences may ensue. So before insulin could be safely
prescribed, it was absolutely necessary to have it
standardized. It is a tribute to the accuracy with
which this was done that it can be, and is, now so
widely used in practice without any ill effects.

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 245

The first standardization was done under the auspices
of our own Medical Research Council, just after the war.
It speedily became clear that international standardiza-
tion too was desirable, and it was soon arranged that
this work should be supervised by the Health
Organization of the League of Nations. The actual
standardization work is farmed out to different
countries. This country, as a matter of fact, has
been entrusted with more of this work than any other,
and it is impressive to see, in the National Institute
for Medical Research at Hampstead, a case containing
the actual biological standards of about twenty im-
portant biological preparations, kept there, as the
standard yard and pound are kept at the Board of
Trade.

They include the standards of certain antitoxins,
like that for diphtheria; of certain drugs which need
very careful dosage, like salvarsan and the other
arsenicals used for sleeping sickness ; of various
hormones such as insulin ; and of the different vitamins,
so important for diet and general health as well as for
special diseases like rickets.

International standardization, of course, also exists
on the physical side. For instance, there is the Count e
International des Poids et Mesures, with which the
National Physical Laboratory is collaborating, among
other things, in a scheme for determining a new
international standard of length in terms of that most
fundamental natural property, the wave-length of a
particular kind of light.

Another interesting example is the International Tin
Research and Development Council, which grew out of
the work started by the British Non-Ferrous Metals

246 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

Research Association in this country. It is an excellent
example of how a really good programme of research
cannot help being essentially international in its
activities, and tends to attract international support.
Though the headquarters of the Council is m London,
this is simply for convenience, and the work is truly
world-wide There is, by the way, a further interest
in this case. Britain is exceptionally well situated to
provide headquarters and staff for many similar kinds
of research. It is a small and centralized country, with
world-wide connections, and a high professional and
scientific standard. This sort of export — the export
of brain-work — could become an important item in our
economy if we took steps to encourage it.

International co-operation is also going on in research
on meteorology in Greenland and other parts of the
Arctic, with a view to establishing the short air route
between Europe and America — and, indeed, in many
other fields.

Of course, the progress of pure science has always
been to a very large extent international. I do not
suppose most of my readers realize the enormous
scale on which the interchange of scientific knowledge
is going on all the time between different countries.
To start with, scientific journals circulate all over
the world. Any good scientific library contains
English, American, German, French, Dutch, Italian,
and Russian periodicals, and those of many other
countries besides ; and often maybe a German
periodical will contain articles by American or Italian
scientists, and so on.

In biology alone, some 60,000 separate scientific
communications are published every year, not to

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 247

mention over 1,000 books; so that one of the most
pressing needs of science is the provision of a really
good abstracting and summarizing service — journals
which give brief but reliable abstracts of all papers
published, and others which provide well-written
critical resumes of recent work m particular fields.
Much has been done in this direction, but there is
still great room for improvement. In a properly
organized world-state, this duty would be carried out
on a large scale by some well-equipped central organiza-
tion; but at the moment this and other aspects of a
“ world-brain ” are still very rudimentary.

Then there is interchange by means of travel —
either by a tour through the research institutes of
another country, or by exchange professorships, or
by spending several months working in the laboratory
of an authority on some particular scientific subject.
This is a most fertile method, and has been much aided
by the policy of various bodies, such as the Rockefeller
Foundation, which provide so many research fellow-
ships for able young workers to hold abroad.

Then, of course, there is interchange of knowledge
by means of international congresses and meetings.
In almost every branch of science these are held at
intervals of a few years, in different countries by
rotation. Personally, I remember vividly the interest
of meeting physiologists from all over the world at the
International Physiological Congress in Edinburgh,
of going to the International Congress on Heredity
in Berlin, and talking for the first time with a number of
Russian research workers whom I had previously
known only by their published papers, of meeting
German and French and Dutch ornithologists at the

24S SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

International Ornithological Congress at Amsterdam,
of going to Geneva to attend the first international
Congress on Population Problems.

Then I would like to mention another interesting
topic which has international bearings. When some
rare but very necessary element is found only m
one or two places, should it be in some way inter-
nationalized ? For instance, much the biggest stock
of helium, which is better for airships than hydrogen,
because it is not inflammable, is in the United States ;
and the biggest known supply of radium is in the Belgian
Congo.

When it comes, not to valuable substances but to
valuable knowledge, scientists almost always co-operate.
The co-operation may be indirect, as when the published
work of a man in one country puts someone else in
another country on the right track. Insulin, for example,
could never have been discovered m Canada, as it
was, but for much previous patient work by English,
French, German, and other scientists. Or the co-
operation may be direct. For instance, recent very
important work on the vitamin which causes scurvy
was carried out by the closest co-operation between
Hungarian, British, Dutch, and American workers and
institutions.

This looks as if there were really an international
spirit among scientists. So there is, among most of
them, in times of peace, but as soon as war breaks out
they are caught up, voluntarily or involuntarily, in
the nationalist compartments of the world's political
system. In this respect we are to-day less civilized
than a hundred years ago, when, for instance, Sir
Humphry Davy was not only allowed to travel through

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS 249

France in the middle of the Napoleonic wars but
actually received with great honours in Paris.

It is, I think, fair to say that while in pure science
international co-operation is the rule, in applied
science, with a few notable exceptions, it is only just
beginning* And I do not mean only m regard to
industry and agriculture, I mean also m regard to
health, population problems, economics, disarmament,
the development of backward areas, and general
administration It is just in these fields that a truly
scientific policy is most needed, but also just where
it will be most difficult to get it, because policy in
regard to them is inevitably coloured by the outlook
of economic rivalry and political nationalism.

Tn this we have a good example of the way in which
'Science is limited m its scope and its usefulness by
political and social structure, and yet at the same time
influences that structure. If science could be applied
on the international scale as thoroughly and efficiently
as it often is within a single business or a single
industry, the most astonishing progress could be made
in every field of human activity and human happiness ;
but it cannot be, owing to the difficulties arising out
of the existing world system, with its rivalries and
jealousies and exploitations, due to the combination
of private profit and national sovereign states.

On the other hand, science is influencing the world
structure. Its applications are making frontiers
look ridiculous, and war ever more and more appalling.
Its findings and its inevitably international outlook are
gradually penetrating general consciousness and show-
ing up the stupidities of nationalist restrictions and
rivalries. Science, as much as any other force, is

250 SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL NEEDS

making for the breakdown of the system which has
given it birth, and in whose bounds it is now confined
and cramped. Though for the time being it may be
exploited for sectional ends, and may actually intensify
present rivalries, m the long run it is hard to see how
each new advance in science can help preparing the
way, however deviously, and through however much
of preliminary chaos, for the world-state.

CHAPTER XIII

SUMMING UP

A Discussion with Professor H Levy

H . L. Well, Huxley, here we are again. I hope
you have profited as much as you hoped you would
by your tour. Anyway, I want to put some further
questions to you.

J. H. All right. Levy. I don't say that I shall be
able to answer them, but 111 do my best : so fire away.

H. L. No, I think the best way to begin will be to
go over the main points we raised in our opening dis-
cussion, and use them as a basis for this. Do you
remember the main headings of our first discussion ?

J. H. I think so. First there was the problem of
how to define science, and then whether there really were
two kinds of science — pure and applied — or only a grada-
tion between more remote and less remote from practice.

H. L. Yes, and that brought up the question of
Universities, and how closely they were linked up with
industrial needs, and this led on to the financing of
science — who pays for research, and why some branches
get much more support than others.

J. H. ... and whether there are not actual gaps
in the organization of research; and if so, why?
A propos of that, I shall want to bring up the lop-sided
character of science in this country, which has impressed
itself on me very forcibly.

251

SUMMING UP

252

H L I hope you looked into the points about
secrecy in certain kinds of research.

J H Yes, and also, as far as I could, into the
international aspects of scientific work. In relation
to that, there are some very general questions, such as
how to prevent science from collapsing under its own
weight, so to speak.

H. L. You mean because of the enormous amount
of scientific work that is published ?

J. H Yes ; the problem of research workers keeping
up with the advance of science, even within a small
field, is getting more difficult every year.

H. L Then we led up to the final question of
whether science could do anything to get us out of our
present social and economic mess

J. H. Yes ; and you were rather sceptical, I remem-
ber. We must have that out properly.

H. L . All right. Let us get down to business.
This question of what science really is — I do not think
we need waste much time on that now.

J. H. No, we agreed pretty well on a definition —
that science is a particular method for getting knowledge
of and control over nature, and that the form and
direction it takes are largely determined by the social
and economic needs of the place and period. What I
have seen has confirmed me in that view. We shall
never get a proper picture of science and scientific
progress unless we take that sort of integrated view, and
think of science as a social function, as well as an
outcome of man's impulses to understand and control
things.

H. L. Integrated view, good. If we are to under-
stand how science operates in society, the effect that

SUMMING UP

253

science produces on the world about us, and the counter-
effect that society, through its needs, produces on
science, we must certainly take this integrated view.
That brings up my next point, that you would find it
impossible to draw any sharp line between pure and
applied science.

J. H. As I said in my discussion with Blackett,
I am now more than ever convinced that any such line
is merely arbitrary, and that often you cannot draw it
at all But, of course, research can be at very different
degrees of remove from practice ; and it is useful to be
able to classify the different kinds of research.

For that purpose, I have come to the conclusion that
the simple alternative of pure versus applied is quite
inadequate. You want at least four categories. At
one end is background research, with no practical
objective consciously in view — like atomic physics, or
experimental embryology. Then baste research, which
must be quite fundamental, but has some distant
practical objective — as is the case with soil science,
or meteorology, or animal breeding. Those two
categories make up what is usually called “pure
science.”

Then you have ad hoc research, with an immediate
objective, like research on discharge tubes for lighting
purposes, or on mosquitoes for getting rid of malaria.
And finally, what industry calls development, or pilot
research, which is the work needed to translate labora-
tory findings into full-scale commercial practice.

Of course, these categories all overlap and interlock,
but they are convenient pigeon-holes.

H. L. Of course. Then there was the question of
science in the Universities, how remote that was from

2 54

SUMMING UP

practice, how far it was concerned with industrial and
other practical aims.

J H. Well, so far as I can see, it is interlocked with
the rest of the system to a greater extent than I had
realized. The number of university departments
devoted to applied science is quite large, and is steadily
growing; the university departments of pure science
often receive big sums from industry or the State ; the
D S I.R. and the Government departments connected
with agriculture at home and in the Colonies provide
really a great deal of money for scientific scholarships
and research grants tenable at the Universities (though
these grants, it should be noted, are often given for
work in very pure science : the Government wants
good science for practical purposes, but realizes that it
will not get it except by promoting the supply of good
scientists, irrespective of their bias to pure or applied
problems).

H. L. So these matters are all interlocked and
interdependent. That brings up the vital question of
money. Were you able to find out much about the
funds available for science, and to what extent finance
— and where it comes from — dictates the course of
research ?

J. H. That is not so easy as you might think. Of
course, you can get all the amounts spent by the
Government on research — it just means digging in
Blue Books. But then there is all the money spent by
private firms on their own research. This is often kept
very secret — sometimes because they do not want their
competitors to know how much they are doing ; and
sometimes, I was amused to find out, because they do
not want their shareholders to know — the shareholders,

SUMMING UP 255

you see, might think research a silly luxury, and
become a nuisance at the annual meeting.

As for university research, that is the most difficult
of all. If you wanted to know even how much of the
Government grant to Universities goes to research,
you would have to carry out a special research to find
out ! And besides that there are general endowments
and special endowments and students' fees all con-
tributing their share.

Then research is helped by the hospitals, and by
charitable bodies like the Rockefeller Foundation, and
special funds like the Cancer Research Fund, and
private institutions like the Strangeways Laboratory,
and scientific and semi-scientific societies like the
British Association or the Eugenics Society.

H. L. Everything tangled up with everything else.
But could you not make any estimate of the amounts
spent ?

J. H. Well, I did arrive at some rough estimates,
but I am sure they are very rough. However, they are
probably good enough to give an idea of the relative
amounts of the total spent on research in this country
which go to different fields.

Research directed to industrial needs heads the list —
that is, counting the money spent by Government, by
university departments of applied science, and by
private firms — with, I should say, nearly half the total.
Research for the fighting services, not counting mere
development, takes about half of what is spent on indus-
try. Research connected with agriculture and related
subjects like forestry and fisheries comes next, with afifth
or a sixth of the total ; and then research connected with
medicine and health, with about an eighth, or even less.

256

SUMMING UP

And research m all other branches, together with all
background research, probably does not come to a
twelfth of the total, though I admit that this item is
the most difficult to be sure of. As to the actual
amounts, I hardly like to give any figures, as people so
often quote rough estimates as if they were ascertained
facts. But I should say that the total spent on research
in this country is between four and six millions a year,
probably nearer the lower figure . 1

H. L. That means that research directly useful to
industrial production receives nearly as much as all
other research put together. This is not surprising
now that we have seen how closely research is linked up
with industrial needs. It does look as if the money
consciously or unconsciously guides the course of
research, does it not ?

J. if. Yes, definitely, I think. And there is another
point that forced itself upon me as I went on my tour.
That is, that the bulk of research in progress in this
country is organized from the production end — that
is to say, it is organized and planned with a view to
improving efficiency in technical processes and reducing
cost to the producer or to the State. There ought to
be much more research organized from the consumption
end — directed towards the needs of the individual
citizen as an individual and as a citizen.

1 It has rcccntlv bc^n stated in a German publication (see
Nature , 24 11 p 2S61 that the amount of money subscribed
by industry for scientific research in the United States in 1931
amounted to the colossal figure of $235,000,000 If this is
correct, it represents about forty times the corresponding
amount spent m Great Britain, or allowing for the ditfcrence
in population, about sixteen times as much per head 1 The
expenditure of Soviet Russia on its geological survey in 1930
was larger than that of all the other nations of Europe put
together.

Science and noise. A portable apparatus which gives an accurate measure of the intensity
of sounds and noises. (See p. 257.)

By courtesy of Metropolitan- Vickers Electrical Co., Ltd.

Science and noise. A new type of “ noiseless ’ ’ electric, motor under test in a sound testing 100m lined
with wool to prevent echoes and resonance. (See p. 2 57 .)

By courtesy of Metropolitan - 1 T ickcvs Electrical Co., Lid.

SUMMING UP 257

H . L. Would you perhaps explain more fully what
you mean ?

J. H. Of course, there is some research done from
the consumption angle— a lot of the work in the
Research Boards under the D.S.LR. is of this sort —
in regard to building, for instance, or radio, and, of
course, a greal deal of medical research. But other
problems are not taken up at all, or only get tackled
piecemeal, because of this general producer bias in
research.

Take noise as an example — noise in the streets
getting on our nerves all day and preventing us sleeping
at night ; noise in aeroplanes discouraging people from
travelling by air ; noise of loudspeakers, children, dogs,
and pianos in houses and flats, preventing us enjoying
our privacy; noise in industry interfering with the
health and efficiency of workers; and so on. Noise,
in fact, has become a major problem in our civilization.
And yet we only tackle it piecemeal. Actually among
the places I have visited myself these last few months
I have seen research on noise and how to reduce it
going on at central Government institutions like the
National Physical Laboratory — work on noise measure-
ment, and on materials which prevent the spread of
noise ; in Government departments like the Air Ministry
— work on silent engines and air screws ; in university
departments of psychology — research on the psycho-
logical effects of noise on manual and mental work ;
in private firms like Metro-Vickers — work on silent
motors for electric fans; in the Industrial Health
Research Board and in the Institute of Industrial
Psychology — research on the effects of noise in factories
on the output and nerves of operatives; m special
s

258 SUMMING UP

research stations like the Building Research Board —
work on reducing unnecessary noise in houses; in
public utility concerns like the London Passenger
Transport Board — work on reducing the noise of tube
trains.

If there were any machinery for making the needs
of the private individual vocal and effective, instead
of this scattered haphazard research, m which anyhow
there are a number of gaps, we should have a large-scale
concerted attack on the problem You could make out
the same sort of case for a concerted attack on diet,
and many other problems.

H . L. Yes, but we have already seen the close
linkage between science and industry. It does not pay
anyone to do jobs like that. There is no remunerative
return on it, so it is nobody's business. They are
gaps that arise from the fact of our economic system
being based on production for profit. But if you want
real problems for research of this nature, there are
plenty. For example, you talked about how science
works for efficiency in production, but if we produce to
consume, as well as to sell, is it not efficiency of the pro-
duction-consumption cycle as a whole that is needed ?
If we divorce production from consumption, it appears
that the more efficient we make production the less
efficient frequently is consumption. The more econo-
mical a process is in man-power, the less effectively can
men consume. No matter how efficient, for example,
we may be in bringing to port a herring catch — the
actual industrial side may be organized to the highest
pitch of scientific management — if the catch is dumped
back into the sea because a good enough price is not
offered for it, then in spite of all the elaborate care, the

SUMMING UP

259

consumption is zero, and the efficiency of the whole
process is zero.

J. H. Yes, there certainly is a real problem there.

H. L. The problem can be put in another way. An
agricultural labourer, for example, frequently cannot
afford to buy the milk he helps to produce ; or opera-
tives m a boot factory cannot afford decent boots for
their children in spite of all that science has achieved m
production alone. We pay workers for production,
and let consumption look after itself.

J. H. The same applies to the scientist himself,
doesn't it ? I expect some of the researchers, say, in
the textile field cannot afford all the clothes they would
like ; and some of them in the laundry research labora-
tory are probably doing part of their washing at home
Anyway, the young scientist is often wretchedly under-
paid. In countries like America and Switzerland, he
often gets less than a policeman or a skilled artizan—
and, in any event, leaving comparisons aside, he often
does not get enough to lead the sort of life to which he
is reasonably entitled.

H. L. Now to come back to your previous point.
What you were really suggesting was to fill in the gaps
in research by national directing and planning of
research. But with a limited fraction of the national
income to be expended on research, and remembering
the present close correlation between industry and
science, this can hardly be done without the exercise
of rather drastic central control over so-called freedom
in the industrial enterprise which stimulates this re-
search. But how can this be done without involving
ourselves in a dangerous form of nationalism, when
there are so many interlocking international connections

26 o

SUMMING UP

and jealousies in the industrial field? And even if
research could be considered as divorced from industry,
which it cannot, it would be impossible to plan even
that internationally on any comprehensive scale when
the scientific situation changes so rapidly everywhere.

J. H. Isn't that like saying that a private person
should have no plans for the future, because life is so
uncertain ?

H . L. No An individual plans for himself, up
to a point, inside a social structure. Man has already
built up society, and he accepts the restrictions that
social life imposes on him as assumptions in his indi-
vidual plans. In the international world there is
nothing yet that corresponds to that. The industries
of different countries compete with each other for the
markets of the world, and any form of National Plann-
ing, if it were efficient, must necessarily have the effect
of intensifying that competition. The logic of that
process seems to imply a repudiation of international
restriction, more intense nationalism, self-sufficiency,
and probably also war. Anyone who looks at the world
now can see the signs already well over the horizon
If planning is to take place — and ultimately it will be
essential — nothing short of a scheme on an international
scale will meet the case, and we are not likely to attain
that without a great deal of trouble, or without sweep-
ing away a great number of our most cherished illusions.
It does not seem to me at all evident that the best way
to attain that end is by striving for national planning,
no more than you would expect to have a rational
regime in Britain itself by endeavouring to make
counties like Yorkshire and Middlesex economically
self-sufficient. You would simply erect new barriers

SUMMING UP

261

that would have ultimately to be destroyed. Scientific
planning, whatever kind of society one may want to
achieve, must be based on world economics and world
natural resources.

/. H. I see. So you would prefer to do nothing
for the moment, while waiting for a revolution or what-
ever will allow your doing things on a world-scale. I
prefer to make a start on what lies ready to hand.

H . L. On the contrary, I see plenty of things to be
done m the meanwhile. One of them is just what we
are doing now : trying to shed daylight on social
darkness, in order that people may appreciate the logical
outcome of the policies they are initiating ; that must
be a preliminary to all planning. It is futile simply
to take up blindly what lies ready to hand, as you will
agree. As for the revolutionary way out, I should
hate that ; but once more, as with all scientific problems,
it is not a question of our feelings, but what is the logic
of the policy adopted. As I have said before, national
planning in a world of fierce competition for markets
implies repudiation of international restriction, danger-
ous nationalism, isolation and self-sufficiency, and
possibly war. War in the present state of Europe
seems to me to mean revolution m most industrialized
countries. I would a thousand times rather have a
rational than an irrational way out from the present
impasse to the international solution, if that is possible ;
and it seems to me we are all heading straight for the
irrational way, the intensification of nationalism.
National planning in a competitive world I see as one
of the steps in that direction. It may be inevitable, it
may be simply the inexorable logic of social transforma-
tion which we human beings work out in our blundering

262

SUMMING UP

way, and of which we are the victims. To me it is
no solution, but the next step towards more acute
crises.

Nevertheless, I agree that it would be a good
thing to know, among other things, what the “ map ”
of scientific work looks like both nationally and inter-
nationally. If we could have an investigation on an
international scale, similar to what you have been doing
so fruitfully on a national one, we might begin to under-
stand more clearly the nature and extent of the social
forces at work, and something even of the dynamic
of society itself. In that field we are blundering
about almost in scientific darkness. The “shape” of
scientific research, for example, in a country primarily
agricultural, would be quite different from that in an
industrial country, wouldn’t it? We might then be
able to see more clearly the nature of the linkage
between industry and science at any period, and why
research in Britain has taken on its particular shape.

J. H. I am rather interested to hear you take this
attitude — I should have thought your sympathies were
all for the socialist outlook, and that this implied more
rather than less central control and centralized planning,
in science as in everything else. It certainly has in
Russia, has it not, where the scientific programme is an
integral part of the general Plan ? Personally, though
I am a firm believer in properly-conducted planning,

I am all against having it too embracing and too rigid.
There should be an “ unplanned zone ” in every field,
to give scope to human originality and initiative. In
this country, after all, it is possible for private people
to put up money for research in fields which they think
need looking into, but which are officially neglected —

SUMMING UP

263

in an earlier discussion I instanced the example of
research into the scientific bases of birth control, and
it is also possible for an individual worker in pure science
at a University to undertake research on whatever aspect
of his subject he likes, irrespective of official views. In
a socialist state like Russia, there is a real danger that
certain fields may be wholly neglected because the
authorities are not interested in encouraging them.

H. L. Well, of course these things can be done in
Russia, because the whole economy of Russia is different.
As a vast country rich in natural resources she is
striving to make herself almost entirely -A** - r xirfcing
in what is to her a hostile world. She is striving to
eliminate the “ profit-making ” element from her
economic system, and therefore her whole approach to
these questions rests on a different series of assumptions
from those accepted as basic m other countries. The
difference is obvious from the fact that whereas every
other country is terrorized at the thought of the dump-
ing of cheap goods within its frontiers, Russia is
delighted to have goods cheaply. The reason lies m
the different basic social economy on which she is
reconstructing her life. As regards “ planning,” there-
fore, no comparison at all can be drawn. We cannot
isolate “ planning ” from " planning for what?” I
agree at once, of course, that in a country like Russia
at present there are certain to be fields of scientific
research that will not be developed, since the planning
authorities will not be interested in them. That is
why I say that each country will give its own peculiar
<f shape” to the research that is conducted there.
We have seen what the map of British research looks
like.

264

SUMMING UP

J. H. Yes, and a very odd and inconvenient shape it
is — entirely lop-sided, with a great bulge on the side
of industry, and the physical and chemical sciences
which help industry; distinctly undeveloped on the
biological and health side, and quite embryonic in the
region of the psychological and human sciences. There
are actually more trained research workers in chemistry
in a single one of the several research laboratories of
I.C.I. than there are trained research workers in
psychology in the entire country !

H. L. Well, what would you propose should be
done about it ?

J. H. One obvious thing to do would be to fill the
gaps in the existing research structure. At the moment
there are Research Councils, with Government backing
and Government funds at their disposal, for dealing
with science in the fields of industry, medicine, agri-
culture, and the fighting services. Pure science is
looked after to a considerable extent by the Govern-
ment Grant to Universities, and by the Royal
Society, though here again there is little attempt at
central co-ordination, such as is done, for instance,
by the National Research Council in the United States.
But when we come to the remaining fields of human
activity, there is nothing. There is an Economic
Advisory Committee, but no Economic Research
Council to plan and finance concrete research in the
economic field ; and as for Social Science, not even an
advisory committee exists. Is not this field sufficiently
important to have a Research Council of its own ?

H. L . Well, it seems to me that you are just suggest-
ing putting up bits of administrative and research
machinery when there is really no motive power to

SUMMING UP

265

drive them. For instance, you have just been telling
me how few psychologists and sociologists there are in
the country. In the first place, where would you get
your trained workers to do the research in the human
field? Who is going to apply their results to social
practice ?

J. H . Rome was not built in a day. But just as
the Russian Government is making desperate efforts to
create the technicians and industrial scientists whom
it lacks, so in this country you could do a great deal,
as Sir Josiah Stamp said in an address to the British
Association this year, to canalize the scientific brains
of the rising generation away from the sciences of
lifeless matter and into the biological and human
sciences. You could do this by altering the number of
scholarships given for different branches of science, and
by altering the science curriculum in schools and
universities.

H. L. That is all very well; but if you did succeed
in getting a supply of good research workers trained in
these sciences, who is going to pay them to do their
research? Why should not they just find themselves
unemployed — I cannot see any reason why the country,
as at present organized, should use their services.

J. H. All the same, up to a point, supply does
stimulate demand, and the nature of the educational
curriculum undoubtedly can help to change the balance
between subjects. I taught for some years in an
American university, and in that country not only
does biology occupy a more prominent position in
schools than it does here, but also it happens, for
rather accidental reasons of educational organization,
that biology can and does have an important place

266

SUMMING UP

in a general college education, whereas, for equally acci-
dental reasons, it does not here. The result has been
that there are many more people engaged in teaching
biology at universities and colleges ; and as research is
part of a university teacher's job, there is a much greater
volume of biological research over there than here.

H . Z. However, I do not believe you can do very
much in those ways to fill the gaps in research. That
will only come when bitter economic necessity calls
out for social and psychological research on a large
scale, and the way is open to apply it. But there are
lots of other questions I want to ask you Science and
war, for instance. Were you able to find out anything
about the attitude of scientists engaged on war research
towards their work ?

J. H. Well, in aeronautical research, for instance,
all the men I talked to were strong on the point that
their work was just as useful for civilian flying as for
war.

H. Z. Yes; and what about the men engaged on
other types of war research ? Judging by my experi-
ence, I should say that most of them just acquiesced
in doing the bits of research as they came along, and
were consciously, or more usually unconsciously, just
functioning as a part of the State machine.

J. H . Yes, I think that is fair for a good many;
though I should say quite a number felt some sort of
conflict, and were subject to divided loyalties, mean-
while getting on with their job. After all, there are no
other attitudes, unless you are going to be completely
loyal to one of the conflicting interests involved, and
become either a conscientious objector or else an out-
and-out revolutionary.

SUMMING UP

267

H, L. These men, of course, occupy a peculiar
position in the profession, since much of their work is
secret. It would be interesting to know what steps are
taken to safeguard the professional interests of such
scientific workers. If they cannot publish their work
in the ordinary way, they must be handicapped m seek-
ing other appointments, and no public credit can be
given to them for the work they have done.

J. H That is not so, of course, if they are employed
by a very large firm or a Government department, in
which they can receive advancement on the basis of
their secret work. On the other hand, as I discovered
rather to my surprise, many Universities grant research
degrees on work which never will be published, although
it meets the standard requirements of being “ suitable
for publication.’ ' ’

H. L. I see. So that the higher branches of our
educational system adjust themselves to this apparent
need for secret research, whether for industry or war.

/. H. True enough ; but, on the other hand, really
fundamental research is rarely kept back from publica-
tion, at any rate for long ; and, anyhow, secrets tend
to leak out.

H. L. And, of course, the patent system, I suppose,
allows some applied science that would otherwise be
kept secret to be published.

J. H. All the same, I did come across some curious
examples of wholesale secrecy. In one government-
aided institution, for instance, I was told that it would
be against the national industrial interests even to let it
be known that a lot of research was being carried on,
much less to describe any of it !

E. Z. So once more we see science fulfilling a

2 68

SUMMING UP

nationalist function. I see that at a reception a few
months ago, a speech by a well-known Cabinet Minister,
lauding the part played by scientists and their research
in providing new weapons for the bitter struggle for
international- markets, was loudly applauded by the
scientists present. I think it is not an exaggeration
to say that this incident indicates how closely scientific
research is associated with the needs of capitalist
production. Critics of our social system often refer
to it as " bourgeois ” or “ capitalist science/'

/. H. Anyhow, if the Nazis in Germany continue
to have their way, there will soon be a “ Nazi ” brand
of science. I was reading an article in a German
scientific journal recently in which the President of the
German Chemical Society asserted definitely that they
could not get good chemistry, whether pure or applied,
without having a National-Socialist attitude to their
work. I am not quite sure what he meant, but that
is what he said !

H.L. All the same, you know, there is an interesting
reflection in connection with that. If science is as
closely linked up with the industrial and social structure
as appears, it is clear that the types of problem generally
studied will largely reflect that bias. That is to say,
the “ spread ” of science as we know it, the fields that
are stressed and those left almost untouched, are likely
to be different from what they would have been under a
different form of social background.

Try to imagine, for example, science being “ begun ”
simultaneously and independently ten years ago in, say,
Soviet Russia and in the U.S.A., and going on, say, for
fifty years. The spread of scientific knowledge in the
two countries would be totally different, for the fields

SUMMING UP

269

of science and the practical problems they would find it
necessary to explore and to treat scientifically would
be different. Thus the picture of Russian socialist
science would be quite different from that of American
capitalist science. This suggests that a rather cautious
attitude should be adopted on the part of those who
seem to imagine science as a sort of idealized knowledge
remote from the nature of the social background, and,
still more, remote from such things as the struggle for
international markets and nationalism.

J. H. That is very interesting. You mean that the
direction taken by science would be different in a
capitalist and a socialist society. The conclusions
arrived at in either case would, of course, be scienti-
fically valid in the other type of society, but they might
not have been arrived at by it ; and even when arrived
at in one, they might not be found useful or interesting
in the other. All the same, historically I feel it is
probably true that science more or less had to develop
as it has done. At least it seems clear that the great
impetus given to research and invention by the profit
motive and national commercial needs was responsible
for the rapid rise of natural science during the last
three hundred years. And now, thanks to that, we
have entered on a new phase — what some writer has
well called “ the invention of Invention/' We have
found out that science is the best instrument for acquir-
ing knowledge and power. We have realized that
science pays, and that it can be profitably applied in
any and every field. We have started to organize
scientific research. Once this stage has been reached,
it seems to me the next step is to apply science all round,
and not merely to the problems where it will yield an

270

SUMMING UP

immediate money profit. But I do not think we could
have reached that stage without the profit incentive
operating m an individualist social structure.

H. L. Well, of course, things would have been
different ; but explain a little further

J. H. Well, look at the absence of scientific progress
in other periods and places — m India, for instance, or
m China.

H. L. That is true enough, although it is also true
that other factors, such as cheap human labour, also
come in in those countries instead of mechanization.
But to go back to my earlier points : it is clear, at least,
how difficult it is to talk of international science, except
for those developments that are either so basic that all
national sciences need them, or that are so general, and
therefore, if you like, so fundamental, that they do not
matter for nationalist purposes.

J . H Well, I don't know that I agree with you.
For one thing, science, as we agreed, has its own
momentum, and as it progresses it changes the social
and economic structure of the country and also people's
general outlook. That means that it is always tran-
scending its own limitations and bursting the bonds
imposed upon it. In other words, the inevitable logic
of this mixture of national and international science is
to make the nationalist problem more acute, and so to
work up to a crisis at which some revolution or radical
change in social structure will be inevitable.

Then do not let us forget that some highly practical
aspects of science are already refusing to be confined in
the framework of national boundaries. For one thing,
really big business is to a large extent international.
In some cases big firms have arrangements by which

SUMMING UP

271

they share the results of research and divide up the
market with agreed spheres of influence. It is well
known that something of the sort holds between various
powerful industrial firms here and on the Continent.
Then there is the work on non-ferrous metals, which I
mentioned in the previous chapter, or the work on
locusts, in which the Italians and the French are co-
operating whole-heartedly with our research centre m
London. And there is the wonderful work of bodies
like the Rockefeller Foundation, which, though it is
financed wholly by American money, supports funda-
mental science m every civilized nation, and has, for
instance, carried out a great campaign of applied science
against yellow fever which has benefited the whole world.

H. L. Yes, but even those international aspects
necessary for national purposes are often difficult to
arrange because of national jealousies.

I remember from my own experience the difficulty
there was in trying to arrange for an international testing
of model aeroplanes in order to compare the accuracy
of the wind-tunnels that are used in such test work.
So that even standards are sometimes difficult to
arrange, because the nations concerned are afraid to
give away their weaknesses to their rivals.

J. H . All the same, you can't get over instances
like the Rockefeller Foundation's yellow-fever work.
And in the field of standardization, a lot of useful
international standards have been arranged. Leaving
out of account the more mechanical side, like the
standardizing of world time or of world measurements
of length and mass, there is all the work done m
standardizing vitamins and drugs and antitoxins, which
is most important for health

272

SUMMING UP

H. L. But perhaps a certain minimum standard of
health is basic and indispensable for every nation.

J. H. I’m not so sure. Health should be indis-
pensable, but it is just a fact, isn't it, that a great
many people have to dispense with it ? And you could
use scientific knowledge about health for nationalist
purposes all right Look at those investigations I
spoke of in my last chapter, on East African native
tribes, which showed what an enormous improvement in
physique and health and average length of life you
could effect by quite simple measures concerning diet,
prevention of parasitic disease, and child welfare. If
one of the big Colonial powers in Africa were to apply
all the resources of science to raise the health and
the energy and the numbers of its native populations,
and another were to do nothing, but just let matters
slide, the former would soon enjoy an enormous
advantage.

H. L. Yes, the fact is that if industry really needed
a healthy population we would have one. During the
war, of course, we realized the need for an A.i rather
than a C.3 nation, but it is not pursued in the spirit
of a business venture.

J H. Well, there is the Ministry of Health and the
Medical Research Council and the Medical Officers of
Health all over the country. Surely these are pretty
business-like.

H. L. Oh, yes; but notice that even the scientific
investigations that are made into such matters as
family budgets pose the problem in terms of the
minimum for which survival is possible, which seems
to me very unsatisfactory. The wage-earning part of
the population, in other words, is not treated as a

SUMMING UP

273

potential and expansible market for commodities, but
as a burden.

J. H . That is where science links up with economics,
isn't it? However, you have brought up the problem
of population, and that is something which could be
studied scientifically.

H. L But what can science do in practice about
the control and design of population, considering the
fact that a planned population has to fit a situation a
whole generation ahead, while it is so difficult to make
anything of the nature of a social prediction ?

J. H. I do not think we could say exactly what
science could do in this field until we have tried apply-
ing it. In general, my point is that most people seem
to think that the size of your population is something
given — an act of God, so to speak — and that you have
just got to accept it and try to fit your social and
economic structure to it. Whereas, in reality, popula-
tion could be controlled — to some extent, at least —
and to an extent not much less than the extent to which
you could possibly control your economic system. So
that what we ought to aim at is to adjust things both
ways — fit the population to the economic system as
well as vice versa.

H, L. I agree, of course, that there is a real mutual
interaction and interdependence between a country's
economic resources and the number of people in it, and
that it is this interaction we ought to study with a view
to control.

J. H. Yes, certainly. To take only one point :
how many people realize that within a dozen years the
population of this country will quite certainly be going
down, and may proceed to continue going down at a
T

J929 1939 194-9 1959 1929 1939 1*544 19*9

Above, a curve showing the probable total population of Great
Britain, assuming no net emigration, for the next 25 years.
Below, the probable change in the proportion of young people up
to the age of 20 (left) and of old people above the age of 55 (right),
calculated as percentages of the total population. (Based on
figures issued in Planning No. 4, 6th June, 1933.)

SUMMING UP

275

very rapid rate ? We have been suffering from over-
population, but within half a century we may quite
possibly find ourselves being frightened by the bogey
of under-population. Ought we not to make a scientific
study of the methods by which populations can be
checked or encouraged — birth-control methods and how
to get them across to the poor and uneducated ; family
allowance schemes ; bonuses or tax rebates for children ;
and so on ? At the moment these are getting looked
at from a merely political angle, or hushed up because
they come under some religious tabu. Why, the mere
suggestion that abortion could even be studied scientific-
ally as a possible method of checking over-population
is enough to make a great many quite responsible
people explode with indignation.

H. L. And I suppose you as a biologist have views
on heredity in man, and the whole question of the
quality of population as well as its quantity ?

J. H. Indeed I have To my mind, one of the most
fundamental problems for scientific study is that thrown
up by Professor R. A. Fisher recently, when he asserted
that a society like ours, based on individualism and
commercialism, and with some sort of ladder of
opportunity for talent to rise and inefficiency to sink,
is inevitably, and of its very nature, the reverse of
eugenic — dysgenic , as the technical term is I cannot
go into all his argument here, but he makes out a
strong case to show how in such circumstances in-
herited qualities making for rise in the social scale,
automatically tend to get linked with inherited quali-
ties making for reduced fertility, and vice versa
That would mean that, generation by generation,
we were steadily reducing the average level of our

276 SUMMING UP

population as regards some of its most desirable inborn
qualities.

H L. Pm afraid I disagree with a great deal of
that, but we cannot argue that here.

J. H. I’m afraid not, my dear Levy. But you
will agree that the problem of eugenics is a vital one
and deserving of intensive study, instead of being
entirely neglected by the powers that be, as it is at the
moment ?

H . L . Yes, it needs study all right. The size and
the quality of a population depend on the social ecology,
the social background, what society encourages and
supplies. And that again depends on the population.
The two go hand m hand, and will have to be changed
together, but it seems to me quite unlikely that
effective steps to deal with population will be possible
unless we first can exercise control over the social back-
ground : and exercising control over society is vastly
different from having scientific knowledge how society
might be changed by the scientist if he were given
control.

J. H. Anyhow, I think it quite certain that science,
if it were allowed a free hand, could control the evolu-
tion of the human species.

H. L. That may be so, but one of the first questions
we have to ask as soon as we have accumulated adequate
scientific knowledge, even if we can ever have it on this
matter, is, What objective have we? Can scientific
men lay down an objective ? We are to use science and
scientific methods, but for what ? * What kind of society
do we want ? What kinds of society are possible at all ?
That is too important a question to leave to scientists.
Science is used, when it is used, to develop and further

SUMMING UP

2 77

the ends of present-day society, and is restricted and
circumscribed by the possibilities inherent m that social
order You must in your survey have come across
many illustrations showing how scientific investigation
and scientific practice are cramped and confined in this
way For instance, there are many things — health is
one — which, while apparently desirable on general
grounds, are not pursued because it does not pay those
who hold the economic power to develop them.

J. H Yes For example, I found a case where a
scientist with a big programme for improving livestock
found how difficult it was to put his admirable ideas
into practice, and as a result is confining his practical
activities largely to answering routine questions from
breeders, while concentrating his research work on pure
genetics very remote from practical application.

H. L. Precisely But if these are the sort of
difficulties that face you in connection with such a
comparatively simple problem as the breeding of
animals, where the scientist has some control, if not
much, of the experiment, how can we possibly regard
the problem of designing a human stock suited to a
humanely desirable environment as a feasible task,
especially since the social background m which human
beings live is changing all the time ? -With all the best
will in the world, you can do nothing more than study
objectively the behaviour of humans in the present
chaos.

J. H. That is just my point. You can reduce the
chaos by scientific study. For instance, } T ou could study
the eugenic or dysgenic effects of different kinds of social
structure, and of different financial and social measures
like income tax, free education, or family allowances.

278

SUMMING UP

H . L . That gets me back to my earlier point. If
we are talking of the use of science for designing a new
society, we must ask ourselves what kind of a society
we want to design, and whether it is a physically and
psychologically possible one. That is to say, we have
to study our desires m this matter, our prejudices —
our bias, if you will — and deliberately set about acquir-
ing power in order to create, with the help of science,
such a biased society. Scientists, like everyone else,
cannot get away from prejudice and bias bias has to be
used Nor is the power to create a new society vested
m their hands.

J. H. Using a bias . . . what exactly do you mean ?

H. L. Well, m the first place we have to get rid of
this myth of impartiality. We have to recognize that
whatever we set about doing is simply a method of
fulfilling the desires of some person or group, and the
scientific question we can ask is, Whose has it been in
the past, and whose is it to be m the future ? Once
that is settled, we can call m the scientists to build up
the material environment suitable to that specification,
the educationist to effect the adjustment m the indi-
vidual to that social background. Thus it must always
be science, education, art, for a purpose •''But science
proceeds by attempting to eliminate this purposive
feature. It treats questions objectively, and therefore
tn itself cannot offer any solution to our social ills.
It can only be called in, like the builder or the plumber,
once we know the kind of house we want — or the type of
water system. It is for that reason that I think the
recent proposal to get scientific bodies to make pro-
nouncements qua scientists on matters of social or
industrial policy must be doomed to failure, since their

SUMMING UP

279

statements must necessarily be coloured by their social
prejudices, and as soon as they become aware of them,
they will separate into different political camps.

J. H. Well, I cannot help feeling you are being too
gloomy, and thinking too much about the particular
limitations of science, and not enough about its general
qualities, which more or less inevitably cause it to
transcend its limitations. I know it is a slow job, but
a biologist, who has to study evolution, gets used to
slow jobs !

With regard to the scientific bodies, I cannot help
feeling that as long as they are not too ambitious, what
they are aiming at is all to the good. Personally, I
know that looking at science in its relation to social
needs, as I have had to do for this survey, has cleared my
own mind a great deal ; and if the scientific movement in
this country can do this and become conscious of itself,
and of its limitations, and of its relation to the economic
driving forces of society, that will be a very valuable step.
The chief moral of this book, it seems to me, is that
science is not the disembodied sort of activity that some
people would make out, engaged on the abstract task of
pursuing universal truth, but a social function intim-
ately linked up with human history and human destiny.
And the sooner scientists as a body realize this and
organize their activities on that basis, the better both
for science and for society.

INDEX

Aberystwyth, Plant-Breeding
Station, 43, 227
Absolute, 199
Abstract ideas, 199
Accident-proneness, 192
Adrian, Dr., 17
Advertisement, 143, 147
Africa, 8, 115, 158, 226, 231, 235,
237 * 2 3 8 > 2 39, 241, 272
Agriculture, 34 seq , 212, 213, 235
Air Ministry, 164, 166, 257
Air-resistance, 109
Airships, 153
Alloys, 59, 134, 15S
Amaru Research Station, Africa,

226

Amateur, in science, iS, 218, 219
America, 119, 247, 259, 265, 268
Ammonia, 135
Amplifiers, 18
Anaemia, 87
Anaesthetics, 6, 84
Animal breeding, 253
Animal Breeding Research
Dept., Edinburgh, 37, 69, 79,

227

Anthropology, 242
Antitoxins, 98, 245
Appleton, Professor, 208
Armaments, 153, 168, 171, 223
Astbury, Dr , 206
Astronomy, 21 1, 219
Atmosphere, research on, 208
Atom, structure of, 209, 215, 253
Australia, 47, 229, 235, 237
Autogiro, 163

Aviation, research on, 83, 152,
153, 15S, 162, 163, 165, 168

Bacon, Francis, 16
Bacteria, 10, 85, 95, 96
Bananas, 34

Basic English, 123

Bateson, William, 35, 216

Bathing-dresses, research on, 74

Battleships, 16S

Beef, 34, 47

Benzene, 6

Bernard, Sir Thomas, 3
Biffen, Sir Rowland, 35, 36, 39
Biochemical Society, 202
Biological control of pests, 229
Biological survey, 226
Biology, 222, 264
Birmingham University, 59, 179
Biiui-coi iro', 93, 149, 2x4, 275
Birth-rate, 201
Bleaching, 68, 76
Bleeding, 85
Blood, 87, 11S, 207
Boiler-scale, 205
Bone-formation, 89
Boot and Shoe Trade Research
Association, 75
Bragg, Sir William, So, 204
Breathing, 94
Bricks, research on, 60
British Association, 2, 33, 255
British Broadcasting Corpora-
tion, 64, 222, 238
British Empire, 225
British Ornithological Union,
219

Broadcasting, 117, 120, 121
Brown-Firth Steel Works, Shef-
field, 134
Building, 50, 137
Building Research Station, Wat-
ford, 53, 258
Bull-dog calves, 37
Burt, Dr. Cyril, 18S

Cahn, Sir Juhen, 44
Cambridge University, 20S, 213

282

INDEX

Camphor, 237
Canada, 9, 47, 238, 248
Cancer, 75, 93, 98
Cancer Research Fund, 255
Carbonization, low temperature,
137

Carding, 73
Carnot, 207

Cathode-ray oscillograph, 118
Cathode tube lighting, 131
Cattle, Dexter breed, 37
Cattle, pedigree, 48
Cavendish Laboratory, Cam-
bridge, 208
Cellophane, 83
Cellulose, 78
Cement, 128
Census, 201

Chalmoogra, for leprosy, 237
Chemical Defence Experimental
Station, Porton, 160
Child Guidance Clime, 188
China, 237, 270
Chlorine gas, 68, 76, 134
Chloroform, 84
Chronometers, 212
Cinchona, 237

Cinema, and research, 210, 239

Citrus fruits, 229

Clothes-moths, 74

Clothing, 67, 129

Clovers, 43, 44

Coal-tar, 29

Cocaine, 84

Coconut, research on, 230
Coke, 137
Cold storage, 8, 47
Comfort m housing, 57, 74
Comite International des Poids
et Mesures, 245
Concrete, cottages of, 51
Concrete, research on, 61
Condensation, 51, 52
Conflict, psychological, 1S8, 190,
192

Congo, Belgian, 248
Conscience, 190

Consumption, 31, 144, 256, 258
Conventions, 107
Corrosion, 51, 53, 60, 137
Cotton, 72, 76, 77, 81, 82, 128,
13a

Cotton, crease-resisting, 77
Craftsmanship, m industry, 53,
55, 62

Crew, Professor, 37
Cuprammomum sulphate, 76
Cutlery Research Association,
Sheffield, 142

Darwin, Charles, 214, 216
Davy, Sir Humphry, 4, 24S
Defence, Committee of Imperial,
167

Department of Scientific and
Industrial Research, 22, 26,
31. 53, 139. 2x3, 234, 238, 254,
257

Descartes, 91
Dewar, Sir James, 11
Diabetes, 86, 92, 244
Diet, 41, 99, 240
Diphtheria, 95, 98, 245
Disarmament, 169, 175
Disease, 84

Distemper, dogs, 96, 97
Distribution, 144, 145
Dominions, and research, 236
Dust, 107, 159, 180, 231
Dye industry, 6
Dyes, aniline, 29

Echoes, 58

Economic Advisory Council, 231,
264

Economic Research Council, 264
Eddington, Sir Arthur, 20S, 216
Edison, 131

Education, 31, 101, 194, 199, 222
Electric welding, 59
Electric-light bulb, 131
Electrical industry, 9
Electricity, 7, 210
Electrification, no
Electro-plating, 9
Empire Marketing Board, 234,
236, 239

Employers, training of, 142, 187
Engineering, 59

Entomology, Imperial Institute
of, 228

Esperanto, 121
Ether, 84
Eugenics, 200, 276

INDEX 283

Evolution, 127, 214, 276
Ewing, Sir Alfred, 2
Explosions, 180

Factory Acts, 178
Falaise, Normandy, 67
Family allowances, 275
Faraday, 6, 7, 8, 9, 21, 134, 204
Farnborough, and aviation re-
search, 164, 165
Farnham Royal, Bucks, 230
Fascism, 200
Fashion, 82
Fertilizers, 42, 45, 135
Field-mice, 235
Films, 1 19

Fisher, Professor R. A , 275
Flame, research on, 1 So
Flax, 81

Fleming, Sir A., 134
Fog, 164

Food-production, 34
Foot-and-mouth disease, 96
Forest Products Research Sta-
tion, 74, 238
Forestry, 237

Frame construction (steel), 52,
59

Freud, 176, 189
Fuel, 3, 162

Furs, research on, 79, 235

Galileo, 210

Game-birds, 235

Gases, poison, 6, 27, 152, 156, 157

Gas-masks, 27, 157, 159

General Electric Company, 140

Geological Survey, 256

Germany, 29, 196, 298

Glass, 137, 159, 205, 211

Gluten, 36

God, 93, 199

Goitre, 41

Gorillas, 66

Government, 195

Grasses, improvement of, 43

Greenland, 246

“ Grid,” electricity, 210

Haber, 133

Haemoglobin, m blood, 87, 11S
Hart, Liddell, 174

Health, 28, 84, 98, 161, 212, 222,
272, 277
Heat, 3
Helium, 248
Herbarium, Kew, 236
Heredity, 19, 35, 38, 79, 191, 275
Hertz, and wireless waves, 116
Hibernation, 91
High-pressure research, 134
Hitler, Adolf, 120
Hookworm, 239, 241
Hopkins, Sir Frederick Gowland,
2

Hormones, 245
Hospital, London, 86
Hospital, Seamen’s, 238
Hospitals, 4, 101
Housing, 63, 66, 99, 196
Human nature, 191
Hydrogenation, 137

Immunity, 207

Imperial Agricultural Bureaus,
227

Imperial Airways, 234
Imperial Chemical Industries, 40,
135, 137, 264
Imperial Conference, 227
India, 226, 235, 237, 238, 239,
241, 270

Industrial fatigue, 28
Industrial Health Research
Board, 1S0, 257

Industrial Research, 152, 153,
256

Industrial revolution, 208
Industry, 126, 21 1, 213
Infant mortality, 239
Inferiority complex, 19 1
Influenza^ 96, 9S
Inheritance, sex-linked, 38
Insects, 212, 228
Institute of Medical Psychology,
Bloomsbury, 188
Insulation, electrical, S3
Insulin, 86, 92, 244, 248
Internal-combustion engine, 106,
116

International Congresses, 247
International Institute of Afri-
can Languages and Cultures,
243

284

INDEX

Internationalization, of civil
fly mg, 175

Interplanetary communication,
124

Invention, 68, 82, 132
Iodine, 41

Jeans, Sir James, 93

Kenya, 239
Kew, 228, 236
Kikuyu, diet of, 239
Knitting, machines for, 82

Labour-saving machinery, 147
Lamb, Charles, 157
Land, 65, 242
Language, 120, 121
Lanoline, 76
Latin, 123

Laue, and X-ray analysis, 205
Laundering, 70, 77, 118
Law, and Psychology, 193, 194
Lawes and Gilbert, 45
Lead, 59, * 3 *

League of Nations, 119, 223, 244
Leather, 71, 75, 77
Leeds University, 67, 206
Lefebure, Major, 168
Leicester, 82
Leisure, 148
Leprosy, 237
Lewisite, 156
Lime, and building, 54
Lime, and pasture, 42
Lister Institute, 89
Lister, Lord, 85
Little Joss wheat, 37
L.M.S., research by, 109
Lodge, Sir Oliver, and wireless,
116

London County Council, 188
London Passenger Transport
Board, 111, 258

London School of Economics,
243

Low temperature research, 136

Malaria, 98, 228, 241
Malinowski, Professor, 243
Manchester, traffic problem, 112
Manchester University, 181

Marconi, 116
Masai, diet of, 239
Mass-production, 50, 52, 54
Mathematics, pure, 59
Measles, 96

Mechanics, development of, 21 1
Mechanization, 162, 270
Medical Research, National In-
stitute for, 245

Medical Research Council, 57,
152, 159, 167, 180, 239, 245, 272
Medical services, 100, 101, 194
Medicine, tropical, 238
Medicine-men, 21 S
Mendel, Abbe, 35
Metallurgy, 141, 162
Meteorological Office, 219
Meteorology, 219, 247, 253
Metro-Vickers, 136, 140, 257
Middle Ages, 216
Migration of birds, 219
Milk, 100

Milk-production, 38
Mind, unconscious or subcon-
scious, 176, 189

Mineral salts, and diet, 42, 99,
100

Miners, occupational diseases of,
179

Miners' Welfare Fund, 179
Mines, 4, 179
Ministry of Health, 272
Ministry of Transport, 183
Minkowski, 92
Missionaries, 242
Moon, motion of, 212
Morality, 144, 198, 214
Morgan, T H , 19
Mortality, infant, 239
Mosaic disease, 96
Mosquitoes, 228

Motor driving, and psychology,
182

Motor industry, 50
Mumps, 96
Museums, 3, 212, 228
Mutton, 34, 47

Mycology, Imperial Institute of,
228

National Institute of Agricul-
tural Botany, 39

INDEX

National Institute of Field Orni-
thology, Oxford, 219
National Institute of Industrial
Psychology, 182, 257
National Physical Laboratory,
22, 109, 131, 136, 164, 245,
257

National Research Council,
U S A , 264

Nationalism, 25, 27, 172, 173,
174, 235, 259

Natural History Museum, 228
Navigation, 17, 21 1
Nazi Germany, 196, 268
Neurosis, 180, 188
New York, in
New Zealand, 47
Newton, Sir Isaac, 21 1
Nitrogen, fixation of, 135
Noise, 11, 52, 53, 57, 5s, 1 12,
181, 257

Non-Ferrous Metals Research
Association, 8, 60, 245

Ondesterpoort, and veterinary
research, 227
Orr, Dr John, 41
Ovary, 91

Over-production, 26, 144
Oxford University, 219, 238

Pacifism, 154, 172
Pamt, research on, no, 205
Panama Canal, 161
Pancreas, 86, 91, 92
Parasites, 229
"Parasite Zoo,” 230
Parrot-disease (psittacosis), 87
Pasteur, 85
Pasture, 42, 45, 46
Patent medicines, 10 1
Patents, 161, 267
Patriotism, 154, 172
Penal system, 194
Permanent waving, 80
Persecution mama, 191
Persuasion, 196
Pests, insect, 128, 212
Petrol, from coal, 137
Phosphorus, under pressure, 136
Phosphorus, and pasture, 42
Photo-electricity, 87, 117

285

Philosophy, 211, 217
Physics, 209, 215, 253
Piccadilly Station, 113
Piccard, Professor, 123
Pile-driving, 60
Pineal gland, 92

Pioneer Health Centre, Peck-
ham, 101

Pituitary gland, 89
Plague, 98, 235
Planmng, in, 149, 259
Plant breeding, 41, 43, 227
Plastering, 54
Plumbing, 59
Population, 148, 271, 273
Post Office, 14, 238
Press and Propaganda, Ministry
of, 196

Printing, 106, 116
Production, 31, 256, 258
Profit incentive, 65, 173, 258,
263, 269

Propaganda, 120, 195, 196
Proteins, 206, 207, 240
Psittacosis, 87

Psychology, 176, 1S6, 193, 202,
214

Psychology, industrial, 181
Psychology, supernormal, 125
Psychotherapy, 194
Public Health Administration,
100

Public Relations, Department
of, 196

Publication, scientific, 247

Quantum Theoiy, 17
Quinine, 237

Rabbit-breeding, 79
Radio-activity, 215
Radio Research Station, 61
Radium, 95, 24S
Rationalization, 149
Rayleigh, Lord, 11
Rayon, 67, 78, 80, 83
Regional surveys, 219
Religion, 197, 214
Repression, psychological, 192
Research Associations, 13S, 140,
153

Research Councils, 65, 264

286

INDEX

Research, different types of,
253

Research, expenditure on, 255
Research fellowships, 247
Research, organization of, 24,
138, 166, 226

Research, secret, 25, 151, 161,
165, 254, 267
Research Stations, 139
Revolution, 261
Rheumatic diseases, 240
Rhythm, and work, 184
Rickets, 89, 99

Road Research Laboratory, Har-
mondsworth, 10S
Roads, and ribbon development,
hi

Roads, arterial, 110
Road-tfains, 235
Rockefeller Foundation, 247, 255,
271

Rocket-plane, 123
Roosevelt, Franklin, 120
Ross Institute for Malaria, 238
Rothamsted, 40, 45, 226
Rotterdam, 185

Rowett Institute, Aberdeen, 41,
69, 227

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,
228, 236

Royal Institution, 2, 134, 204
Royal Society, 264
Rubber, 82
Rumford, Count, 3
Russell, Sir John, 40
Russia, 19, 133, 154, 195, 196 ,
256, 262, 263, 265, 268
Rust, disease of wheat, 36
Rutherford, Lord, 209

Safety in Mines Research Board,
1 78

Safety Lamp, miners’, 179
Salvarsan, 98, 245
Sawfiy, pest of wheat, 230
Scholarship schemes, 213, 254,
265

Science, amateur, 18, 21S
Science, applied, 16, 204, 217,
253

Science, definition, 21, 252
Science, Greek, 16

Science, pure, 12, 16, 204, 217,
253

Science, training in, 142
Scientific societies, 219
Scurvy, 248
Sea-plane, 164
Selenium, 11S
Sex, 190, 193, 195
Sex instincts, 91
Sex-lmked inheritance, 38
Sheffield University, 137
“ Shell-shock,” 27, 159
Shoes, 133

Shrinkage of fabrics, 74, 80
Silk, 81

Silk, artificial, 67, 78, 80, 83

Silk-worms, 81

Sm, 191

Skidding, 108

Slate, research on, 62

Sleeping sickness, 29

Sleepy sickness, 96, 245

Slums, 63, 66, 99, 1 61, 196

Smallpox, 96, 98

Smith, Hamblin, 193

Smoke, 3

Smokeless fuels, 137
Social Science, 264
Socialism, 262

Society, organization of, 199
Sociology, 31, 145, 198, 202
Soil science, 39, 226, 253
South Africa, 8, 227
Southern Railway, no
Stability, of aircraft, 163, 165
Stamp, Sir Josiah, 198, 264
Standardization, 55, 62, 70, 98,
127, 130, 244, 245, 271
Stapledon, Professor, 43
Statistics, 145
Steam-engine, 106, 207
Steel, 1 31, 205
Steel, construction, 52, 59
Steel houses, 51
Steel, stainless, 134
Stephenson, 5

St* John's Wort, plant pest, 237
Stradling, Dr., 53
Strangeways Research Labora-
tory, 88, 255
Straw, 37
Submarine cable, 7

INDEX

287

Submarines, n
Sugar-beet, 37
Sun-planning, 56
Suppuration, 85

Swan, inventor of electric bulb,

131

Sweat, 179
Swynnerton, 231
Syphilis, 98

Tadjikistan, 115
Tanning, 71, 77, 12S
Tar, 93
Tariffs, 143
Telegraph, 106, 119
Telepathy, 124
Telescopes, 210
Television, 118, 119
Temperament, 186, 192
Testing stations, for crop plants,
39

Tests, psychological, 186
Theology, 217, 218
Thermodynamics, 207, 208
Thomson, William, 7
Thyratrons, 209
Thyroid gland, 91
Time-lag, and armaments, 168,
170

Tin, international research on,
245

Tissue-culture, 8S
Town-planning, 66, 114
Tractor, caterpillar, 45, 115, 158
Tradition, in industry, 53, 70
Traffic problem, 113, 117
Transport, methods of, 106, 115
Trypsin, 77
Tsarevitch, 38
Tsetse-fly, 231
Tube-trams, 112
Tuberculosis, 95, 98, 99
Tung-oil, 237
Turbines, 132
Tyndall, John, 10

Typhoid fever, 95
Typhus fever, 98
Tyres, motor, 82

United States, 119, 248, 256, 268
Universities, 21, 22, 139, 14 1,
21S, 253, 257, 265
U varov, 231

Vacuum flask, 11
Van Nelle, 185
Venereal disease, 99
Ventilation, 113
Veterinary science, 227
Virus, 88, 94, 95, 97
Vita glass, 134

Vitamins, 89, 99, 100, 245, 24b
Vivisection, 97, 172
Vocational guidance and selec-
tion, 176, 185, 187

War, 27, 152, 1 71, 213, 260
Warburg, Otto, 94
War Services Research Council,
167

Weathering, of stone, 60
Weights and Measures, 129
Welsh Plant-Breeding Station,
Aberystwyth, 41, 43, 227
Wheat, 9, 36, 37, 47, 2"i4, 230
William the Conqueror, 67
Wilt disease, 96
Wind-tunnels, 164, 271
Wireless, 116, 117, 120, 121, 219,
238, 239

Wireless valves, 17, 134, 209
Wood, of Nottingham, 77
Wool, 71, 76, 81, 83, 206
Wool Research Association, 73,
75

World-State, 225, 247, 250

Yellow fever, 96, 97, 271
Yeoman wheat, 37

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